


to face unafraid (the plans that we made)

by singsongsung, sylwrites



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Tropes, Tropes Everywhere, the authors do not apologize
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-06 08:58:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12814095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylwrites/pseuds/sylwrites
Summary: "You need to show Alice that you’re in charge of your own life. You are the captain of your own soul, Betty Cooper.” Veronica drums her manicured nails against the side of her empty mug in a steady beat, a sure sign that she’s feeling contemplative. “Would you like to know whatIwould do?”“Why not," Betty says.Veronica leans forward. “I’d bring home Alice Cooper’s worst nightmare.” She smirks. “And boy, do I have the perfect candidate in mind.”AU.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Who's ready for tropey trash??
> 
> This is a joint project by singsongsung and sylwrites. singsongsung is writing Betty's PoV, and sylwrites is writing Jughead's. 
> 
> Happy Holidays/Winter Solstice! We'd be wildly grateful if you'd leave us a comment with your thoughts, in the spirit of the season.

Perched somewhat precariously on the edge of an clawfoot tub, one hand gripping its edge with enough force that her knuckles turn white, Betty looks down at the phone she holds in her other hand and breathes, “Unbelievable.”

She frowns down at the blank screen of her phone for another moment before she repeats, this time with more heat in her voice, “ _Unbelievable_.”

There are two things Betty can’t quite believe, both of which are creating an uncomfortably tight feeling in her chest. The first is her mother, who called to discuss holiday plans in that crisp, overly-chipper voice of hers, the one that left absolutely no room for disagreement, and in the process threw a curveball Betty’s way. It was a classic Alice Cooper move: a cheerful conversation about how much she was looking forward to having her children at home, a brief aside about the adorable outfits they’d each purchased for Polly’s infant daughter, a completely ordinary passive-aggressive reminder about bringing _appropriate_ clothes for the Christmas Eve mass the Cooper family always attended despite maintaining absolutely no presence in the church during the rest of the year, and _then_ -

“Oh, sweetheart, I almost forgot to give you the good news! Dilton _and_ his parents are able to join us for Christmas dinner. Isn’t that just lovely?”

The second unbelievable thing is that Betty, now twenty-five years old and generally a lot better at standing up to her mother than she had been at fifteen, had, in the face of this ambush, been so shocked that Alice had been able to talk over all her sputtering sentences smoothly, and so, in her inability to produce a coherent protest, Betty had implicitly agreed to her mother’s ridiculous plan.

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She met Dilton Doiley when she went home to see her family over Thanksgiving, and while she technically blamed her mother for being, well, _her mother_ , she couldn’t help but feel that the whole situation was, to some extent, her older sister’s fault. Polly got married when she was twenty-three, and now had an eight-month-old baby. Betty didn’t traditionally go home for Thanksgiving, but she’d made an exception because she wanted to see her niece. She knew she’d likely have to field a few needling comments from her mother (the last time she’d been back to Riverdale, in the summer, it was only two minutes after baby Esmerelda was settled into her arms that her mother suggested that Betty might try a _reputable_ dating site, not that swiping nonsense on cellphones, but one of the paid websites Alice seemed to imagine busy med students posted profiles on), but she had not been expecting _Dilton_.

Polly, like their mother, had married her high school sweetheart. Polly, like their mother, had procreated. Betty had only a six-month relationship in her junior year of high school, no sweetheart to speak of, and she knew it had sparked some concern for her mother when she hadn’t immediately joined a sorority and set to work finding a _college_ sweetheart, which was clearly the next best thing. However, Alice hadn’t been too pushy about things, not at first, seeming to understand Betty’s dedication to her career options and her pragmatism-based breakup with her serious college boyfriend after graduation, but when Polly struggled to get pregnant, and Betty’s birthdays continued to pass without a new boyfriend in sight, Alice’s unyielding dedication to the Coopers’ embodiment of the perfect, all-American family with 1950s values won out.

Enter Dilton.

Thanksgiving was probably not technically Betty’s first encounter with him - they’d attended the same high school, though he was a year younger. She didn’t remember him, however, and his emergence in her parents’ kitchen had startled her.

Her father was at the _Register_ office. Polly, Jason, and baby Essie were over at the Blossoms’. Her mother announced to Betty, who was sitting at the table enjoying a plate of leftovers in an old hoodie, her hair thrown into a messy bun, that Dilton had just _happened_ to stop by, and that she had to run an errand, and it would be wonderful if Betty wouldn’t mind entertaining him.

Betty was embarrassed, her cheeks flaring with heat, but she’d grown up in that household, and it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. She offered Dilton a wry smile, apologized for her mother’s behaviour in a commiserating tone, and asked if she could get him a cup of coffee or a slice of pie.

He accepted both offers, and with a steaming mug at his elbow and a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting on his pie, proceeded to make a terrible impression. He was in grad school, getting his master’s degree in psychology, and he was clearly quite assured of his own intelligence. He was arrogant in that assurance and dismissive of a lot of things: popular TV shows, sports, young people’s enjoyment of socializing in bars. She got the impression that he may have been bullied in high school. He was a survivalist; he had a collection of guns. He didn’t read much for pleasure. He was, in short, very much not her type.

She realized quite quickly that he actually _wanted_ to be there, and had a horrible vision of her mother handing him photographs of her to look over and assess, which did nothing to help her perception of him. As she nodded along to what he was saying, trying to convey the barest amount of polite interest in her expression, she tried to figure out how she might get rid of him. Say she had a stomachache? Apologize and tell him that she was actually just about to head back to the city?

“Are you alright, Betty?” he asked, extending a hand across the table. She inched her own hands closer to her body. “You look like you’re dissociating.”

She blinked at him, one of her eyebrows lifting slightly. “Excuse me?”

“I completely understand. Intellectually, of course, not personally. For persons with mental illness, the holidays can be - ”

The reality of what he knew about her, and of who, exactly, had imparted that information, hit her all at once, and her chair scraped against the floor as she got to her feet, unable to keep just one of her hands from curling into a tight fist. “Dilton,” she said. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

He didn’t get up but instead leaned back in his own chair, regarding her as though she were some sort of specimen. It was a horrible way to be looked at. “Your mother mentioned that you have outbursts,” he said, eyeing her fist, and for one blinding instant, she wanted to use that fist to punch him.

When Alice finally returned, they had a fight that ended with Betty in tears, feeling betrayed and exposed and _hurt_ , and her mother’s hand in a death grip around the stem of a wine glass.

“This, Elizabeth,” her mother said, “is exactly why you need a nice boy like Dilton.”

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After another couple moments of staring at her phone like it’s going to provide her with answers, Betty stands up, goes to the sink, and splashes a little cold water on her face, hoping the shock of the temperature will make her feel a bit less numb.

When she makes her way back to the expansive kitchen, full of marble and golden accents, there are still plates of pancakes, fruit, and croissants left over from brunch laid across the large island. Veronica is where Betty left her, sitting on a cushioned barstool and scrolling through something on her phone. She glances up at the sound of Betty’s footsteps, her smile starting to fade before it’s even truly blossomed.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, setting her phone aside.

“That,” Betty sighs, sitting down on the stool next to Veronica’s, “was my mother.”

“Uh-oh,” Veronica sing-songs lightly, but her eyes go hard, grow darker. Betty’s met Veronica’s father fewer times than she can count on one hand, but still, sometimes she recognizes Hiram and all his Godfather-esque mercilessness in her best friend’s face. It actually causes her some concern to think about how Veronica might act upon meeting her mother; she honestly believes, sometimes, that Veronica, with those hard eyes, could out-Stepford Alice Cooper in anger coated with politesse.

“Yeah.” Betty spears a strawberry with her fork and then decides she doesn’t really want to eat it. “Remember Dilton?”

Veronica makes a disgruntled noise. “How could I possibly forget?”

“She invited him over for Christmas. Him _and_ his parents.”

“What a - ” Veronica snaps her mouth closed before she gets as far as insulting Alice. When she seems to have contained her anger, she mumbles something in Spanish under her breath and then says, at a normal volume, “You told her exactly what to do with that ridiculous idea, I hope?”

“I didn’t,” Betty says quietly, not quite able to meet Veronica’s eyes. “I was so - I was shocked, I guess, and she was doing that thing where she just keeps talking like she’s not hearing a word I’m saying, and I - god, V, it was like I was in high school again.”

Veronica tilts her head sympathetically. “You’re not, though, B. You’re a grown woman, and you make your own choices. You can stand up to your mother - you’ve done it before! You did it at Thanksgiving.” With a little huff, she demands, “God, did she ever even apologize for that?”

“No, she never apologized,” Betty admits softly, resisting the urge to dig her nails into the old, faded crescent scars of her palms; her mother is not the sort of person who admits anything, be it wrongdoing or defeat. “And I thought about not going home for the holidays, just staying here and eating takeout or something, but when I mentioned it to Polly she called me in tears and said I _had_ to be there for Essie’s first Christmas, so… ”

“Well, first of all, that sounds terribly depressing, and _obviously_ , if you were to skip out on Christmas with your family, you’d come with me and my parents to St. Barts. But I know you love your niece, and I know you’re easily guilt-tripped, so I imagine trying to convince you that beaches are preferable to upstate New York is probably a losing battle.”

“Probably,” Betty agrees apologetically, a wry little smile tugging one corner of her mouth upward.

“In that case, you need to show Alice that you’re in charge of your own life. You are the captain of your own soul, Betty Cooper.” Veronica leans into her stool’s backrest and drums her manicured nails against the side of her empty mug in a steady beat, a sure sign that she’s feeling contemplative. “Would you like to know what _I_ would do?”

Betty finally eats the slice of strawberry off the tines of her fork. “Why not.”

Veronica leans forward. All hardness is gone from her eyes now, and they’re full of the glitter of mischief. “I’d bring home Alice Cooper’s worst nightmare.” She smirks. “And boy, do I have the perfect candidate in mind.”

“What?” Betty asks, her nose scrunching in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Bring home the anti-Dilton,” Veronica says, getting increasingly animated. “Bring home the very last boyfriend your mother would ever want you to have. Play chicken with her, B. Walk up to the door in your best Christmas sweater with a great big smile and say, _Mommy Dearest, I’d like you to meet the love of my life, Jughead._ ”

Betty can feel her eyes widen. “Jughead?” she repeats. “ _Jughead Jones_? Your boyfriend’s best friend, generally disenchanted with the world, _former gang member_ , countless tattoos, _that_ Jughead?”

Veronica beams. “Isn’t it perfect? I mean, god, his name is _Jughead_. I couldn’t find a better candidate if I’d designed him myself.”

“V…no. This is - no, I can’t do that. I barely know Jughead - ”

“Oh, calm down, Betty, I’m not asking you to sleep with him,” Veronica says, waving Betty protests away. Her mischievous smirk returns at full force and turns into a grin before she bites her bottom lip, lifting one eyebrow suggestively. “I’m just asking you to _pretend_ he’s banging your brains out.”

“Veronica!”

“B.” Veronica grabs both of Betty’s hands, clasping them tightly. “Imagine your mother’s _face_.”

Without meaning to, Betty does. Alice’s reaction to seeing her picture-perfect, ever-innocent baby daughter draped over an ex-biker gang member is, admittedly, pretty priceless to envision.

“ _See_ ,” Veronica says pointedly, having caught a hint of Betty’s smile.

Betty shakes her head and presses her lips together to erase all evidence of amusement. “So, what are you proposing, exactly? I ask Jughead, a guy I _barely_ know, to… what, pretend to be my boyfriend for a few days?”

“Exactly.”

She shoots Veronica a skeptical look. “And you think he’s going to say _yes_?”

“Why not?” says Veronica Lodge, who virtually no one ever says no to, her tone breezy. “He’s single. You’re hot - I’m not saying anything is going to happen,” she adds with half an eye roll when Betty opens her mouth, “I’m just saying you’re pleasant to look at, and you’re very charming company. You and I will, of course, buy all your presents that will be ‘from’ him to make it all convincing, so he won’t be out any money. I know you Coopers are disciples of the cult of Donna Reed, so there will be a ton of food, and if there’s anything I know for sure about Jughead, it’s that he loves to eat. And - ” Veronica sobers slightly. “His family situation is a little rough. He might just love to have Christmas plans fall into his lap.”

“I don’t know,” Betty murmurs doubtfully, chewing her bottom lip. It seems like a very weird thing to do - she’s never _fake_ dated someone.

“Think about it, honey,” Veronica says. “But as you do, please don’t forget about the look that your mother will get on her face. I know you saw it.”

Betty offers her a small smile. “I’ll think about it,” she promises.

“Great,” Veronica says warmly, and then casts her gaze around the kitchen, zeroing in on a chilling bottle of champagne. “Mimosa?”

It’s ten-thirty a.m. on a Sunday and Betty has some work to prepare for the week ahead in the afternoon, but after that conversation with her mother -

“Yes,” she says. “Please.”

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Betty does think about it - she contemplates her mother’s reaction more than once - but by the end of the week she’s mostly put it out of mind. It’s something Veronica, who engages in some sort of face-off with her own mother, Hermione, at least once a year, could easily do, but Betty is ultimately pretty traditional about relationships (at least, she thinks she is - she’s not sure if two is a large enough sample size to really determine this), and she has a terrible poker face. Considering how little she knows about Jughead Jones, she’s not sure she could convince anyone she was dating him, never mind in love with him. He’s not exactly her friend by choice but by circumstance: Veronica is her best friend, Archie is his best friend, Veronica and Archie are nauseatingly obsessed with each other, and consequently, she and Jughead end up in the same place at the same time quite often. He’s not the kind of friend she could ask for a huge and potentially awkward favour.

On Friday evening, as she heads over to Veronica’s to get ready to go out to some bar Veronica desperately wants to try, she’s no longer contemplating surviving Christmas but thinking only about surviving the next few days and the long nights she’ll have to work to get everything done before all her bosses - along with most of the office staff - go offline for a few days. She’s already tired, and she hopes Veronica is ready to work some magic with makeup.

Veronica greets her with a warm hug and a couple questions about her day, but she’s quick to return to the idea Betty’s basically forgotten about: “So, B. Have you been considering my suggestion for Christmas?”

“I thought about it, yeah,” Betty says, trying to smooth out the frizz of her hair after she’s taken her hat off. “But it’s not for me, V.”

Veronica’s face falls slightly. “Why not?”

Betty gives her a gentle look. “I could never ask that of him, and - ”

“Oh, is that all?” Veronica asks. She takes Betty’s hand and starts pulling her toward the living room. “That’s a very small wrinkle that I can _easily_ smooth out.” She smiles. “I’ll ask him. Jughead!”

They come to a stop in Veronica’s living room, where Archie and Jughead are sitting on separate couches, both leaning forward, all of their concentration on the video game they’re playing. Betty is stunned by their presence but supposes, deep down, that she should have known. It’s a common occurrence for the two of them: same place, same time.

The game now paused, Jughead turns toward them, his hair messy and falling into his eyes, as always. “Yeah?”

Beatific smile still in place, Veronica announces, “I have a proposition for you.”

  


 

* * *

 

 

Jughead has been through a lot for Archie.

There was the time when they were twelve and Archie ran out of quarters at the arcade, so he went outside and took spare ones from the base of an easily-broken and long-forgotten payphone. When he was inevitably caught - even Albany had its standards - it was Jughead who took the fall so that Archie's father wouldn't find out and his perilous position on the middle-school football team wouldn't be jeopardized.

Then there was the time four years later, when he'd gotten involved as a legacy pledge of sorts with his father's motorcycle gang and Archie had sort-of-accidentally made out with one of the other youth-wing members’ girlfriends. Convincing Sweet Pea not to kick Archie’s ass had been a feat of epic proportions, paralleled only by the time six months after that when _Jughead_ had gotten the shit kicked out of him for defending yet another not-fully-thought-through Andrews plan to call the cops on a rival gang.

Things got worse for a little while after that, but once Jughead left the gang - a story in and of itself - life began to ease a bit, and the nature of the slings and arrows he suffered for Archie eventually became a little less violent and a little more nauseating-slash-overpowering.

As a primary example: Archie's current girlfriend Veronica, a classic poor-little-rich girl from the Upper West Side with a sharp tongue and even sharper heels. Jughead _suffers_ Veronica, albeit not in the way he expected to upon their first meeting. They actually get along fairly well and have a bit more in common than he'd thought they would, so it's not a bickering or insufferable-brat dynamic. The problem, if there truly is one and it’s not just in his head (which a lot of things are, it seems), is that Veronica, just like Archie, has a lot of plans. And sometimes, just like Archie, they're not terribly well thought through.

Case in point: this crazy one, which she's just dropped in his lap during a pause between rounds of _Call of Duty_ at her apartment.

“You want me to _what_?” Jughead repeats, staring up at Veronica.

“I want you to go home for Christmas with Betty's family and pretend to be her boyfriend to piss off her mother,” Veronica says, exactly as before, prim smile still on her face.

He's dumbfounded. It is, far and wide, the strangest thing someone has ever asked him to do, and he once housed an illegal snake in his apartment for two days. His eyes slide to the girl beside Veronica, who looks as embarrassed as he somehow feels.

Betty Cooper, Veronica’s best friend, and now his friend too by extension, he supposes. They’re definitely friends-because-our-best-friends-are-banging and not hey-let’s-have-drinks friends, but that’s not really listed as a negative in the mental scoreboard that Jughead keeps at the front of his mind. Almost as a rule, Jughead doesn’t like to make new friends; people are at worst vessels for betrayal and at best inconveniences with varying levels of impact, so he tends to stick with the couple of people that he knows and trusts, like Archie.

But of all the new people he’s been forced to associate with, mostly through Archie, Betty is one of the good ones. She’s never been anything other than kind to him, and from what he knows of her, she’s a hard-working, goal-oriented person with a genuine smile for nearly everyone, which he can respect - a rare kind of individual whose worst quality truly _is_ that she just _cares too much_. They’re not that close, so he’s not really in on whatever the little reference to her mother is that is making the corner of Veronica’s lips twitch, but he is always in support of parental rebellion, in theory, even if he does suspect that Betty’s version is a bit different than his.

Still, _this_ is a bit much.

“I’m not quite sure what part of that to unpack first,” he says, leaning back on the couch and dropping his controller. He looks to Archie for assistance, but he looks equally awestruck by the proposal.

“I can help,” Veronica declares, perching herself on the couch perpendicular to him, next to Archie. “Betty’s mother has started a new career as a pimp, with Betty as her one and only - and unwilling - client. There’s some kind of outdated and ridiculous assumption being made here that because Betty is not married with children, she’s going to die alone, and in order to avoid that her mother has chosen a preferred mate for her.”

 _”Her_ preferred mate,” Betty emphasizes, speaking for the first time. “Not mine.”

“Not Betty’s,” Veronica echoes. “Being that it’s the twenty-first century and being single in your mid-twenties is not a crime, Betty is of course opposed to this and has objected. Unfortunately, it seems that her mother is a particular breed of witch and doesn’t care. Given that, and because _nobody_ puts my Betty in a corner, I have come up with a _brilliant_ plan to irritate the hell out of Alice Cooper, and for that, I need you.”

Jughead blinks slowly. His head already hurts and it’s been two minutes. “Why?” he asks.

“Why you?” Veronica clarifies. He nods, and she continues. “Well, you’re probably the exact opposite of Alice Cooper’s ideal son-in-law. You’re all angry and broody - in a hot ‘chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected, suicide-machines’ kind of way, don’t worry, some girls are into that - plus there’s the whole, y’know, gang thing. Not a suburban mother’s dream. No offense.”

“It’s hard not to take offense to that,” he says dryly, turning his head to Betty. “You’re on board with this?”

She’s still standing and looks even more uncomfortable than before, her hands fidgeting and her eyes downcast. “I can’t deal with her shit anymore,” Betty finally says, biting her lower lip and sitting down on the opposite end of the couch from Jughead. “I need _something_ to change. She doesn’t listen to reason, I - this is as good an idea as any.” Her gaze lifts to his, and he can see in her eyes a mixture of embarrassment and sheer exhaustion that makes his heart hurt unexpectedly. “I would take care of everything, and I mean my mother’s crazy, but she’s also a pretty good cook. But … you don’t have to say yes. I know this is a crazy thing to ask.”

It is, but somehow, Jughead’s initial instinct is to say _yes._ Maybe it’s the conversation he’d just had with his little sister, revealing that this would be yet another Christmas where he doesn’t get to see her, and the resulting fact that yeah, he could use a distraction, which this certainly would be. Maybe it’s his overall ambivalence toward his backup plan, the annual Chinese takeout festival at the Andrews residence. Maybe it’s the fact that he knows what it’s like to live under a parent’s thumb, even though this thumb seems very real and his is more of an overpowering idea. And maybe still it’s because it’s _Betty,_ who is the opposite of the type of person that he thought would ever partake in something crazy like this - if she’s asking, she must need it.

So he picks up the controller, ignoring everyone for a moment, and selects the next mission. “Okay, yeah. I’ll do it.”

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They agree to meet at the 86th Street subway station at noon on December 23rd. It’s not particularly close to either of their apartments, but Jughead has booked a vehicle at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car that is situated a few blocks away with the specific goal in mind to minimize as much Manhattan traffic as possible before slipping through the Lincoln Tunnel to Jersey. Betty had agreed without any hesitation, so he’d not anticipated that the location would be an issue, but when he climbs the steps from the platform and sees her, he realizes he probably made a mistake.

She’s standing off to the side with a weathered backpack over one shoulder, a purse strapped across her body, and two large suitcases at her feet. By contrast, Jughead has a small duffel bag, which has his clothes for the few days they'll be gone, a couple of smaller items, and his laptop. And there's still extra space.

“Moving home permanently?” he asks as he approaches Betty, raising a curious eyebrow.

She turns at the sound of his voice and smiles at him, wide and earnest. “No, god forbid,” she says. “But I have all my gifts for my parents, Polly, Jason, my gift to you and to me from you, plus lots of stuff for Essie. And clothes.”

Jughead reaches out and takes the handle of the biggest suitcase. “I could have picked up the car and then gotten you,” he points out, surprised at the heaviness of the bag. “You took all this on the subway?” he grunts, heading toward the exit.

Betty shrugs sheepishly. “This is already the biggest inconvenience I have ever levied on anyone. I couldn’t ask you for _another_ favour.”

He frowns slightly at that and shakes his head. “‘A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary,’” he quotes, leading her onto the street. “Or a woman, in this case,” he clarifies, turning west.

She follows him, tugging the other suitcase behind her. “You really into Roman philosophy?”

Jughead laughs. “I’m into whatever I need to be to get inspiration for my book,” he informs her, slowing his stride so he can fall into lockstep beside her.

“You’re writing a book?” Betty asks, her ponytail bobbing cheerfully. “I thought you were on the political beat.”

“It’s not for the _Times_ ,” he says. “It’s … on spec, I guess. It’s about a murder that happened in Albany when Archie and I were about fifteen. Kinda of a true-crime thing.”

“A modern-day Capote,” she comments. “That’s really interesting.”

He raises an eyebrow at her; he gets a lot of reactions about his book, but never _that’s really interesting_. “Yeah?”

She flashes another one of her sweet smiles at him as they turn down West 83rd, the rental company now in plain sight. “Why wouldn’t it be?” she asks, looking genuinely confused. “So is it kind of like _The Body_ meets _In Cold Blood_?”

 _Whoa_. Jughead slows his pace even further and looks at her with surprise. “Yeah, _exactly_. That’s exactly what I’m going for. How did you-”

“If you were fifteen, I’m sure the crime had a big effect on you,” Betty muses, her cheeks flushing slightly. “Maybe a little older than Gordie Lachance, but still.”

“Gordie’s a bit of a dork,” Jughead jokes, smiling at the ease with which Betty offers a responsive laugh. “I prefer to think of myself as Gordie but with Chris Chambers’s aesthetic.” They reach the front of the Enterprise Rent-A-Car location and he reaches out to hold the door for Betty.

“Definitely,” she agrees, stepping through it and smiling her thanks. “You’re a lot more River Phoenix, too. Well, if you ever want to share, I’m definitely interested in seeing a draft.”

He files that way for future reference. He doesn’t consider himself to be the kind of person who shares his work mid-process, but nobody’s ever really asked, either. Besides, only five minutes in and Betty’s already got his goals pegged; if anyone might have productive input, it seems like it’d be her.

“I’ll let you know,” Jughead replies, then approaches the counter.

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It takes just under two hours to get to Riverdale, but at least twenty-five minutes of that is spent stuck in the five-mile zone in around the Lincoln Tunnel. The delay ends up being okay; although Jughead had feared that awkward silence would dominate the trip, the conversation ends up flowing easily between himself and Betty. He finds out that she, too, had been a journalism major before switching, and that her parents run the local newspaper in their town. It’s something to talk to them about, she tells him, but if the _point_ of this whole thing is that they’ll hate him, Jughead’s not sure he cares to remember.

An hour into the drive, Betty starts singing along with the radio. He doesn’t mind at first, because she turns out to have a beautiful voice, which really only adds to the Disney-princess vibe that he’s gotten from her since their first meeting. But after three renditions of various Taylor Swift songs, Jughead draws the line, and her Bluetooth privileges are officially revoked.

Instead, Betty fills the time by bringing him up to speed on the various dynamics of her family. Some he’s gathered from hearing stories over the months, but most is new information: the overbearing, hyper-controlling mother; the weak-willed and passive father; the bubbly older sister who married her high-school sweetheart and had a beautiful, precious baby girl.

“Like if the Cleavers had a not-so-secret psychological control disorder,” she explains, and _now_ he’s excited. The whole thing is starting to give him _Twin Peaks_ vibes, a feeling that is not diminished when they drive past a sign that introduces Riverdale jauntily as “The Town with Pep!”. It’s like a Rockwellian dream - or nightmare, he supposes, judging by the new and palpable tension coming from Betty.

They pull up to a house on Elm Street, Jughead trying all the while to suppress a joke about _The Nightmare_ , and park in the driveway. Betty gets out first, carrying only her purse to begin with, and comes to stand by him with her lower lip worrying between her teeth.

“Ready, _babe?_ ” Jughead asks, grinning teasingly with the hope that his exaggeration will help her relax a bit.

“As I’ll ever be,” Betty replies. She lets out a short puff of air, then grabs his hand and tugs him toward the front door. She knocks swiftly.

Moments later, it’s pulled open by an attractive blonde woman in her late forties. “Elizabeth,” she says, her smile wide like Betty’s but completely devoid of the natural warmth he’s come to expect with it. “Merry Christmas.”

“Mom,” Betty begins, threading her arm through Jughead’s and leaning her head against his shoulder, “this is Jughead.”

 

 

tbc.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya girls have added another chapter since the holiday trash seems to run deep in both of us. This is now 2/6. 
> 
> Thank you so much for your comments and we hope you enjoy!

Betty wakes in the morning with an Alice Cooper hangover, the kind of ache around her eyes that can only mean she fought with her mother the night before.

She also wakes with an arm slung over her waist and a pair of knees tucked up in behind her own. The Alice-induced pain in her eye sockets and fog in her brain prevent her from realizing, for a moment, exactly what is happening -

And what is happening is that Jughead is spooning her. _Cuddling_ her.

She holds her breath, as though if she dares to inhale too deeply she’ll wake him up, and she doesn’t know where that, where waking up tangled up together, would leave them.

They ended up like this because of the very conversation that produced her headache. After greeting Betty’s boyfriend with the utmost civility, smile still perfectly in place, though Betty could detect some strain in the tendons of her mother’s neck (“ _Jug Head_ ,” Alice had said, a crisp enunciation, as though those two nouns, an object and a body part, could not possibly compose a human being’s name, and definitely not the name of someone who was dating her daughter), Alice closed a hand in an iron grip around Betty’s arm and steered her into the home office she shares with her husband.

“What on earth, Elizabeth?” Alice demanded. “Who _is_ that?”

Betty shook off her mother’s hold. “Jughead. He’s my boyfriend. I _knew_ you wouldn’t approve, and I couldn’t figure how to bring him up, but… you’ve sort of forced my hand with this ridiculous set-up with Dilton. I don’t need a matchmaker. I’m in a relationship.”

Alice’s brows crept up to dangerous heights. “And how long have you been in this _relationship_ , exactly?”

Veronica had prepped her for this very question, so Betty answered, without missing a beat, “Ten months.”

“Elizabeth - ” Alice exhaled slowly, like Betty was trying every ounce of her patience. “Honey, honestly. How long do you expect this _relationship_ to last?” A flicker of concern appeared in her eyes and then vanished again. “You’re acting out.”

“I’m not - ” Betty began, but her voice was high, nearing a yell, so she started over in a tone that was quieter but no less firm. “I’m not _acting out_ , Mom. I’m twenty-five years old. I wanted my family to meet my boyfriend. I _love_ Jughead,” she added, and she was so angry that the emotion in her voice made that statement sound real, even to her own ears. She arched an eyebrow of her own. “And he’s sleeping in my room.”

And now here she is, with Jughead Jones sleeping in her room, in her bed, his body curled around hers. She knows the cuddling isn’t intentional - he’d tried to argue that he could sleep on the floor, on her window seat, anywhere but in her childhood bed with its pink comforter and floral sheets, and they’d ultimately fallen asleep hugging their respective sides of the mattress, very careful not to even come close to touching one another. Their unconscious movements through the night are what led them here, so her discomfort is pretty minimal - she knows he’s not _trying_ anything. Still, she’s… surprised. The Jughead she’s come to know has a fairly barbed personality, and she never would’ve pegged him as a cuddler. She’s surprised, too, by how warm and snug she feels with her back against his chest. It has, admittedly, been quite a while since she’s woken up with someone wrapped around her.

She glances down at the arm he’s got around her. In the midst of the tattoo that she knows goes all the way up to his shoulder, primarily in black ink with occasional bursts of green, she spots something she’s never noticed before, two words that are attached to the main design of the sleeve by only a single line, a curl coming off the final letter. _Neutiquam erro_. She doesn’t know what it means, and her journalistic instincts tell her to look it up, but when she carefully picks her phone up from her bedside table and presses the home button to light up the screen, she discovers that her alarm is scheduled to go off in two minutes. Her sister will arrive before too long, and her mother is undoubtedly currently making pancakes and bacon for breakfast along with sugar cookies to decorate later, as tradition dictates.

Betty turns off her alarm, sets her phone down, and then very gently begins to lift Jughead’s arm from where it lays, heavy with slumber, over her body. He makes a disgruntled noise, pressing his face into the back of her neck, and Betty freezes. A moment later, he pulls back his arm himself and shifts a bit, putting a couple inches of space between them on the mattress.

“Sorry,” he mumbles from behind her. His voice is rough from sleep.

“It’s okay,” Betty says immediately. She sits up, kicking the blankets aside so that she can sit crossed-legged. She throws Jughead a smile that she hopes clearly says _don’t worry about it_.

He’s not yet entirely awake, scrubbing a hand over his eyes and squinting at her when he drops it. “Told you I should’ve slept on the floor.”

“And I told you that was ridiculous. I didn’t drag you to Riverdale - and make you drive me here, no less - only to force you to sleep on the floor.”

“I _volunteered_ ,” he mumbles. His arm extends, and for a moment it looks like he’s going to touch her again, but he ends up just stretching his arms, one of his elbows cracking.

“Polly and Jason will be here with the baby soon, and my mom’s definitely already cooking. We should probably get up and get ready.”

“’Kay,” Jughead sighs. He does reach out then, presses the tip of his middle finger lightly against one of the reindeer dancing over her pyjama pants. “You really commit to festivity, huh, Cooper?”

She can’t help her smile. This is the most unguarded she’s ever seen him, still tied closely enough to dreamland that he has yet to put up his walls for the day. “Jones,” she says, with a teasing lilt to her voice, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

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Jughead’s drinking coffee at the freshly-wiped-down kitchen table and Betty’s at the counter mixing icing colours for cookie decorating when Polly and her little family arrive. Betty wipes her hands hastily on a dishtowel, makes sure to direct a supportive smile toward Jughead, and heads for the foyer. He trails a couple steps behind her, bringing his mug along. She wonders if she should offer to throw some Bailey’s in the cup for him - it might make her family more bearable.

“Hi, baby,” she breathes, a cheek-splitting smile taking over the face the moment she spots Esmerelda. The baby’s carrier is sitting on the floor as Polly and Jason take off their coats, and she crouches down in front of it, leaning in to plant a gentle kiss on Essie’s chubby cheek. The baby lays a curious hand on Betty’s own cheek, and her heart very nearly melts.

“Hi, sister,” Polly says wryly from above her. “I’ve missed you, too.”

“Hi, Poll,” Betty says, flashing her a grin before she sets to work carefully unbuckling Essie. “Hi, Jason. Merry Christmas.”

“Same to you,” he says, and then adds, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“No,” Jughead replies, stepping forward to shake Jason’s hand. “I’m Jughead. Betty’s boyfriend.”

“Betty’s _what_?” Polly asks as Betty straightens up with Essie in her arms.

Jughead puts a hand against the small of Betty’s back and taps his fingers there gently, playfully. “It appears she’s been keeping me a secret,” she says gamely.

Polly is still gaping at Betty, so Jason steps in to save the conversation, his gaze flicking back and forth between Betty and Jughead only a couple times, as if trying to figure out how on earth they work together, before his good breeding kicks in and he says, “Welcome to your first Cooper Christmas.”

Jughead slides his hand to Betty’s hip and squeezes lightly. “Happy to be here.”

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“Ten _months_ , Betty, really?” Polly asks. They’re in her old bedroom, and she’s got Essie laid out on a changing pad on the bed. Betty holds a toy above the baby’s face, entertaining her - Polly doesn’t need her help with this, not by any means, but she’d come up with an excuse to get Betty alone and whisked her off before Betty could even open her mouth to protest. “I understand not telling Mom, but why wouldn’t you tell me? You’ve been with this guy since before Esmerelda was even born.”

There is a glimmer of hurt in her sister’s eyes that makes Betty sigh. “I know, Poll. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, by not telling you, or keep you out of any part of my life. I just… ”

Polly puts a new diaper on the baby deftly. “You just?” she prompts.

Betty wracks her brain for a moment and ends up back in her bedroom that morning, remembers Jughead’s arm around her and reading the ink on his skin, the feeling of his breath on her neck and the grit of his early-morning voice. It’s not something she can imagine telling her sister about, even if she weren’t in the midst of an elaborate lie. “I felt… protective, I guess,” she says quietly. "Of it. Him. Us."

When she looks up again, her sister is examining her, this time with something softer in her gaze. “You really like him,” Polly assesses, her voice equally soft.

A lump forms in Betty’s throat at the tender look on Polly’s face - Polly, who came home at sixteen talking about true love, and who meant it. Betty returns her attention to Esmerelda and swallows hard. She says, “Yeah. I do.”

Back downstairs, her father, Jason, and Jughead are sitting around the dining room table with icing-covered knives and bottles of sprinkles in their hands. Alice is baking again, scones for tomorrow’s breakfast. A spoon clangs as she drops it in the sink, half a frown on her face.

She approaches Jughead, feeling bad for having abandoned him. “How is it going here?” she asks lightly, sliding a careful arm over his shoulders.

He holds out a decorated cookie to show her. He’s picked a Santa and made both the beard and the face blue, using black sprinkles for eyes and a line of dark blue sprinkles for lips, and added a plethora of white sprinkles to the beard. “He has frostbite,” Jughead explains.

Betty chokes down a laugh. “That’s morbid.”

“A morbid cookie just for you, babe,” he says, handing it to her. He slides an arm around her waist in turn, pulling her a bit closer to him. She looks over his face and sees a wry smile in one corner of his mouth, so she does her best to channel Veronica, one half of the most outwardly affectionate couple she knows, and takes a seat on his lap. He skims his thumb over her hip atop her sweater, which she takes to mean _it’s okay_. She bites into Santa’s beard.

“What’s the verdict?” he asks.

She has to chew for a moment before she can answer. “Too many sprinkles,” she says. His eyes follow her tongue as it flicks out of her mouth to lick a smudge of blue frosting off her lip, and she suddenly feels like she’s overheating. She wonders how soon she can get off his lap without it seeming abrupt.

“Betty, honey,” Hal says. He sounds remarkably cheerful considering that his baby daughter is sitting on a tattooed man whom his wife would unironically call a _hoodlum_. “Jughead was telling me about his bike; it sounds like a great machine. It’s about time you found a boy who can recognize a good engine as well as you can.”

Alice, who has put her scones in the oven and moved on to another recipe, turns the electric mixer on to the highest setting. Hal clears his throat and adds, over its frantic drone, “Safety first, of course. I hope you both wear helmets.”

“Of course, Mr. Cooper,” Jughead says.

He looks at Betty, quirking a brow oh-so-slightly. Something like a smile ghosts over his lips and twinkles through his eyes.

She bites into Santa’s face.

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There is snow on the ground and the wind is not too brisk, so Betty bundles up Essie with Polly’s help and takes her out into the backyard.

Essie attempts to gather handfuls of snow in her comically large mittens and babbles happily to herself. Even though she’s only wearing jeans, Betty kneels down right next to her and lets the snow soak through the denim at her knees. She begins to construct a miniature snowball for Essie to hold; Jughead crouches down next to them and starts packing snow idly into a larger one.

“How are you doing?” Betty asks him softly as Essie throws snow into the air and squeaks with joy as it falls back down around her.

“Good,” he says. “How about you?”

“They’re my family,” she says. “I’m used to them. It’s got to be different for you. If you need a break - ”

“Betty.” He stops packing the snowball for a moment and just looks at her. “It’s an aggressively traditional holiday celebration with a family that basically - no offense intended - looks like it’s been ripped from the pages of an L. L. Bean catalogue. It’s hardly torture. I’m doing fine.”

Essie crawls toward her, and Betty adjusts the baby’s hat. “I think my mother would prefer J. Crew,” she says quietly. There’s a strange little tremor in her voice.

Jughead keeps packing his snowball in the pair of her father’s gloves that he’s wearing. “You never answered my question, you know,” he says. Examining the snowball, which is gaining size, he asks, “Hey, do you think she’d like a snowman? Just a little one.”

She smiles, somewhat startled by the suggestion. “I think she’d love that.”

He nods once and starts rolling his ball through the snow. Betty holds her own small snowball out to Essie, who promptly drops it, and tries to remember what question he’d asked her.

_How about you?_ , meaning, _How are_ you _doing?_

She looks back at her sweet baby niece and tries, unsuccessfully, to help Essie make a snow angel.

When Jughead’s snowman is done, it’s about two feet tall, and Essie seems to consider it a curiosity. “Snowman,” Betty tells her, pointing. “That’s a _snowman_. Essie’s snowman.”

“O’ ma,” is all Essie manages, and Jughead chuckles.

“I’ll take it,” he tells Betty, and it’s automatic, the way she returns his easy, genuine smile.

“He needs a personality,” Betty decides. She’s standing, now, with the baby in her arms, and her knees are freezing. “I’ll go inside and see if I can find him some accessories.” She turns, and Essie whines, reaching back behind Betty’s shoulder.

“O’ ma,” Essie pouts, wiggling in Betty’s hold.

“We’re going to get him all dressed up,” Betty explains to her gently, but Essie whimpers, her eyes big and round.

“I can take her,” Jughead says. His voice is soft. “If she wants to stay out here with her new best friend. You’ll only be a minute, right?”

“Yeah,” Betty says slowly. “Just a minute.” She looks into her niece’s face and then into Jughead’s, searching his eyes for something she can’t name - but even unidentified, she feels like she finds it. “Okay.” She eases Essie, who seems to be twice her normal size in her big snowsuit, into his arms. “You’re going to stay here with Jughead for a minute, okay?”

Essie regards him for a minute but doesn’t seem alarmed, and a moment later she reaches her arms toward the snowman, babbling to herself. Betty smiles at Jughead, who nods at her to indicate that he’s got this, and then jogs back toward the house.

She returns to the yard with mismatched buttons to make eyes, some raisins to make a mouth, a carrot for the nose, an old scarf of her own, and a cowboy hat from a Halloween costume of Polly’s eons ago, which was the best she could do. She finds Jughead bouncing Essie lightly in his arms, talking to her, and the baby beaming toothlessly at him, one of her mittened hands on his shoulder.

“Look what your Aunt Betty brought,” he says when she approaches them. To Betty, he asks, “Are we making a Western snowman?”

“I guess so,” she says, depositing her haul on the ground. Jughead shifts the baby in his hold in order to return her to Betty.

“She likes you,” she comments softly. It’s another thing that surprises her - she never would have assumed he was a kid person.

He shrugs. “I’ve had some practice. Little sister; six-year age gap.”

Betty hadn’t known that about him, either. She lifts Essie out of his arms and into her own. For a moment, while they both have their hands on the baby, their faces are very close. Something in Betty’s abdomen twists up tightly, then uncoils.

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Once they’re back inside, Betty hands the baby over to Polly to remove her winter gear while she and Jughead shed their own jackets, hats, and mittens in the mud room. Betty shakes out the snow that got in her hair when Essie was throwing it around.

“I should ask my mom if I can help with dinner,” she says.

Jughead nods. “You have a very gender-segregated household, you know,” he says, but there isn’t any judgment in his voice; it’s only an observation. “I guess I’ll go see if the men are smoking cigars or something.”

Betty’s lips curl into a small smile. “You’ll be okay?”

“Yeah. I don’t think your dad hates me nearly as much as your mother does.”

“He’s never really liked Jason,” she confides in him quietly. “So that alone is probably getting you some points.”

“Hey, I’ll take ’em where I can get ’em,” he says as they head toward the kitchen.

“Ah, ah, ah!” Polly calls as they move into the kitchen from the little hallway that separates the mudroom and garage from the main part of the house. Her tone is mischievous, her eyes lit up. “Back up, lovebirds,” she says, and points upward.

Betty looks up into the arched doorway and frowns. “That wasn’t there yesterday,” she says, heat beginning to prickle in her cheeks as she stares at the sprig of mistletoe.

“Mom must’ve forgotten to put it up,” Polly says, all innocence. “But I remembered.”

Betty rolls her eyes and forces herself to smile. Her mother is at the counter, chopping onions with a certain amount of viciousness; her brother-in-law is at the table feeding peas to his baby daughter. “Poll, this is silly.”

“Betty,” her sister says, frowning, “it’s tradition.”

Jughead rests at hand in the middle of her back, and for just an instant, that gesture steadies her. But then he says, his voice every bit as teasing as her sister’s, with just a hint of seriousness, of _it’s okay_ , underneath, “Yeah, babe, it’s _tradition_.”

He pulls her under the mistletoe, tilts her chin up with a single finger, and, before Betty can truly decide if she’s going to go along with this or not, kisses her.

It isn’t a particularly long kiss, but it’s not a peck, either. Jughead puts his lips on hers and his hand slides slowly down to the small of her back, pulling her flush against him. After a second of shock, Betty kisses him back, letting her mouth move with his, pressing into the kiss for just a moment. She rests her hands against his chest, and she can feel, faintly, the beat of his heart. It seems a little fast, but that might just be her own anxiety.

Jason lets out a soft, teasing wolf-whistle, and they break apart. Polly is grinning.

Betty clears her throat. She feels Jughead’s hand rub over her back, up and then down, before it drops to his side. “Can I help you with anything, Mom?” she asks in a slightly strangled voice.

In a voice of steel, Alice says, “Wash your hands first, Elizabeth.”

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She still feels a bit like she’s reeling from the kiss through their early dinner. Occasionally she loses track of the conversation altogether and has to ask someone to repeat what they’ve said. Even when she tries very hard to concentrate, there is another train of thought playing, on loop, in the back of her head: _Jughead kissed me. Jughead kissed me._

He had to, she tells herself, as she helps Polly load the dishwasher. It would have been weird if she and the man she claimed to love both refused to kiss under the mistletoe. She’s never kissed someone in front of her mother before, but she’s twenty-five, Jughead is supposedly her partner of ten months, and mistletoe does, traditionally, demand a kiss. He had to kiss her. He had absolutely no choice, since Betty herself was unable to make the first move.

He had to kiss her, but did he have to kiss her like _that_?

Veronica’s texted her five times, demanding to know how it’s going, and Betty has no idea to what to say. She’s in the midst of her third attempt at composing a reply when she walks mindlessly into her bedroom and ends up interrupting Jughead changing for church.

“Oh,” she gasps, nearly dropping her phone. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he says with a shrug, and she supposes it is - it’s not like he’s naked. He’s only shirtless, already having traded his worn-in jeans for a pair of chinos. Still, she feels like she’s seeing something very private. He has another tattoo that she’d never known about, a fairly large serpent piece over his left shoulder blade, and there are parts of him she knows now that she hadn’t before: the muscles in his back, the trail of hair running down his abdomen, the lines of his hips.

“I should’ve knocked,” she says, and heads for the bathroom she once shared with her sister, closing the door firmly behind her.

She leans back against the door and closes her eyes for a moment. In what feels like the infinite surprise of the day, she’s discovered something else new about Jughead Jones: he’s hot.

After a long moment, she opens her eyes and types out a reply to Veronica.

_Going great :)_ she writes, and presses send.

 

* * *

 

 As the saying goes, there’s a first time for everything. And never has that been more true for Jughead than over the last twenty-four hours spent in Riverdale as Betty’s fake boyfriend.

First, he’s never shared a bed with a girl that he wasn’t explicitly dating, and even that is a short list. So late the previous evening, when Betty had demanded that he share the bed with her, he’d been ready to decline. _Had_ declined, in fact - numerous times. And still, he’d ended up in her bed anyway, leading to first time number two: the first time he’s ever been intimidated by a girl in a little t-shirt and printed pajama pants.

The third had come before that, in terms of chronological order, when he’d been mildly terrified by the fury in Betty’s mother’s eyes at the sight of him. Jughead was no stranger to fierce women. The Serpents were full of them: mothers who raised rough boys on their own, daughters who had to fight tooth and nail for their rightful standing amongst the men, girls who could cut through bullshit with tongues sharper than any of the knives he’d ever carried in his pocket. In another life, Jughead thinks that Alice Cooper would have probably been their queen; she has the right kind of no-holds-barred anger, but she’d also clearly learned the grand art of manipulation and forced calmness. Unfortunately, in this scenario, Betty seems to be the main victim of her mother’s mind games.

He could see the change in her from the second they pulled up to the house. She looked tense, jaw set, and even after being pulled aside by her mother - likely to be berated for bringing home a strange tattooed man and presenting him (surprise!) as her longtime boyfriend - she still seemed on edge much of the evening. After hearing a few stories about her mother, Jughead hadn’t anticipated liking her, but seeing a usually happy, smiling Betty be affected on such a seemingly base level by someone who should - theoretically, anyway - be her biggest cheerleader was disheartening, and now he _hates_ Alice Cooper.

The feeling seems to be mutual, though Jughead supposes that that _is_ kind of the whole reason he’s here.

Right now, he’s sitting in a pew at Christmas Eve mass. He and Alice are separated by Betty to his left, but she’s still somehow managing to glare a hole through the side of his head. He suspects that it has something to do with Betty’s hand being laced through his; he can’t really blame Alice, especially since that’s something he’s definitely focusing on too. She’d grabbed his hand when they sat down, and it had also been Betty who had decided that their conjoined hands would rest on her right leg.

Which brings Jughead to the fourth ‘first time’ in the last twenty-four hours: the first time he’s ever been legitimately worried about the prospect of going to hell. He’s done a lot of bad things in his life and been a non-intervening bystander for even more, but it’s this, sitting in a church with his hand on his fake girlfriend’s leg, that’s going to finally get him.

Because they’ve gone to church and because it’s Christmas Eve, everyone’s dressed a little nicer. He’d worn a wool sweater and chinos, while Betty had come dressed in a corduroy skirt and one of the tight sweaters she seems to live in. Jughead is essentially a stranger to religion and its various infrastructure, including cute little churches in equally cute little towns, but it does seem that even the church itself is dressed up a little, too. There are smiling families and bright ribbons; even the twinkling lights of the two large trees near the front flanking the altar seem to be bouncing off the stained glass windows, creating a warm atmosphere that is unsettlingly comfortable.

The real problem is that Betty’s skirt is only a sensible length when she’s standing, and now that they’ve sat down, the back of his hand is resting atop her leg. She’s wearing navy tights because of the cold, he imagines, but still.

It wouldn’t be an issue for him, really, if it weren’t for the fact that this is not the first time he’s noticed Betty’s legs. They were the second physical feature he’d registered about her upon their first meeting months ago, after her striking eyes. Quickly, it had become just another one of those facts that he recalled about the non-romantic people in his life: Archie wants to be Jack Johnson, Veronica loves pearls, Betty has great legs.

_Had_ being the operative word, because that fact had come roaring back to life earlier that day, along with every other physical observation, new and old, that he’d ever made about Betty. It had all started when he’d woken up spooning her and been alarmed both at how intimately they were intertwined _and_ how badly he did not want to move. She’d appeared downstairs afterward in a sweater that highlighted the smooth, even sweep of her collarbone, and he was both immediately and oddly overcome with the desire to bite it. Some time spent outside making a snowman had sparked a renewed appreciation for her bright green eyes, and by the time they’d kissed under the mistletoe, Jughead was no longer in denial about how beautiful Betty was and how about much he wanted to do _that_ again.

So here he is, sitting in church, ignoring the pastor and instead thinking about what it would be like if Betty wasn’t wearing tights and if her mother wasn’t sitting beside her, and whether her skirt is stretchy enough that he could pull her to wrap those legs around his waist, and okay _now_ he’s going to hell for sure.

Somehow, Jughead manages to survive through the mass, which is relatively short and mostly celebratory, and when they walk out of the church he breathes a sigh of relief that he's now out of lightning-bolt retaliatory territory.

Betty slips her arm through his once they’re down the steps and turns to her mother. “Mom, Jughead and I are going to walk back, okay? I want to give him a little tour past the high school.”

Alice looks like she wants to say no, but Hal drapes an arm over his wife’s shoulders and says, “No problem, sweetheart.”

_Blessed be the meek_ , Jughead thinks.

Once her family has gone back to their vehicles, Betty drops her arm from Jughead’s and makes a face in the direction of her mother. “She’s driving me crazy,” she states. “I kinda wanted a break, and figured you could use one too. I hope that’s okay.”

“Sure,” he agrees, then points at her legs. “You’re not gonna be cold, though?”

“They’re fleece-lined,” Betty says with a shrug, like that’s supposed to mean something to him. “I will take you past the school, though. Let’s go this way.” She gestures to the right, where a line of quaint houses ends in what seems to be a football field.

She leads the way and Jughead follows, taking in the spirited lights of the homes that they pass. He wonders what it would have been like to grow up with one of these cookie-cutter lives, then recalls the tension in Betty’s hands when he’d grabbed one earlier and wonders if all of these families have similar secrets.

“So do you think this whole thing is working?” Jughead asks, nodding between them. “Like, is it pissing your mom off enough?”

The smile that crosses Betty’s face is wide and genuine. “Oh yeah,” she says. “She hates you. Tomorrow you definitely need to wear short sleeves for at least part of the day so she can see your tattoos.”

Jughead laughs. “My pretentious teenage-gang member tattoos, you mean?” he clarifies.

She bites her lip, clearly fighting a smile. “I didn’t say they were pretentious.”

“One of my tattoos is a snake. Another is in Latin. I wore a lot of black. Definitely pretentious.”

She lets the smile escape, then immediately looks embarrassed at herself. He’s not sure if her flushed cheeks are due to that or because of the cold air on her skin, but he likes it. “What does it mean?”

“The gang I was in was called the Serpents,” Jughead explains, looking away from her. She doesn’t seem judgmental about it, and he’s certainly never tried to hide that part of his past from any of his friends - Archie’s friends - but it’s still awkward. Being in her hometown has never made it clearer that the life he grew up with and the one she did are very different. “We all got snake tattoos. The Latin one means ‘I am not lost’ and I got it when I was being an angsty little asshole about my mother.”

Betty’s quiet, nodding slowly beside him as they walk toward what is definitely a high school. Her lower lip is between her teeth again, mitten-clad hands shoved into the pockets of her coat, and her jaw is twitching. He knows what that means.

“You can ask, Betty,” he tells her, glancing away again. “It’s okay.”

“What happened to her?” she asks. Her voice is soft but the question hangs in the cool evening air anyway. Fitting, he thinks.

“She moved to Ohio with my little sister when my dad refused to get sober. I was fifteen.”

“What about you?” Betty asks, more urgency in her tone now.

Jughead shrugs. “She always favoured Jellybean - that’s my little sister. I’m too much like my dad. Too stubborn, too angry, too weak in the same ways that he is. I look just like him, too. By that point I was already getting involved with the Serpents, just like my dad, and she told me I was a lost cause.” He doesn’t know why he’s rambling on, or why he’s telling her any of this to begin with - she probably doesn’t want his life story, and he usually doesn’t offer it. There’s just something about the kindness he’s observed in her and the soft, sympathetic lilt in her voice that makes him feel like he can say it and it’ll still be okay, and that in turn makes him _want_ to confide in her. Plus, she’s showing him all of her warts by being here, and he wants her to know that she’s not alone.

Her arm slides through his again, to his surprise, and she leans against him as they walk. “I’m sorry, Juggie,” Betty says.

_Juggie._ He likes how it sounds.

“She’s wrong, you know.”

Jughead gives a brief laugh. “You don’t even know my dad,” he points out. “He’s in jail, did you know that?”

He expects her to fall silent again, but instead she just tightens her arm around his and says, “People do bad things. It doesn’t always make them bad people. None of this is as black and white as people like my mother want it to be.”

It starts to snow gently. Each snowflake brings another glint of the yellow lights that are overhead as they walk across the deserted football field. Jughead knows how this particular movie is supposed to end: a kiss between the beautiful girl and the damaged boy from the wrong side of the tracks, an arm around her waist, a head dropped to his shoulder. And in an alternate reality where things could work out for him, he can almost imagine this charade being real.

But life is not cinema, and in this universe, women like Betty Cooper don’t actually fall for men like him. So instead he settles for just one of the denouements and slips an arm around Betty’s waist. She’s cold, he tells himself, and they approach the building.

“This is my high school,” Betty explains. “Riverdale High, home of the Bulldogs.”

“You were a Bulldog, huh?” Jughead asks, looking at the school. It seems to be in better condition than the one he’d attended post-divorce in Albany, that’s for certain.

“I was a River Vixen,” she corrects, and when he looks to her with a confused eyebrow raised, she smiles. “Cheerleader,” she clarifies.

Jughead grins at that, squeezing her hip and shaking his head slightly. “Of course you were,” he says, his head now full of images of her in a classic uniform with a flippy little skirt. “Betty the cheerleader from Riverdale, the town with _pep_.”

She’s definitely blushing this time as she knocks her hip into his. “Shut up.”

“Please tell me you own white tennis shoes.”

Betty rolls her eyes at him. “I don’t think you want to compare cliches, Juggie.”

That makes him laugh. “Yeah, point taken.”

They start to head back when Betty’s teeth start chattering. She refuses Jughead’s coat but slips her hand into his again as they approach her house. Alice is standing near the window, seemingly adjusting the curtains, and Jughead nods ever-so-slightly in her direction.

“We’ve got an audience,” he says carefully.

Betty slows her walk to a crawl and glances up at him, eyes shining. “She’s such a stalker.”

He can’t argue with her on that. “Does she know you’re not fifteen years old?”

“Yeah, she thinks I’m approaching my barren years, remember?”

“Oh, right.” Jughead shakes his head again and stops walking altogether. “It’s been twenty-four hours and she’s already getting on my nerves,” he tells her, sliding a palm onto her cheek. “She’s still watching. I’m going to kiss you again, okay?”

Her eyes are wide, but she nods her assent. “Okay,” she utters, her voice nearly a whisper.

He leans down and touches his mouth to Betty’s softly, careful not to deepen it or make her otherwise uncomfortable. He tugs her in closer by the waist, torn between needing to make sure Betty’s okay with this and wanting to make it a good show for Alice, who apparently feels it’s acceptable to spy on her grown adult daughter.

“Is this okay?” Jughead mumbles against her lips, opening one eye and closing it again quickly. “She’s still there.”

Betty lets out a frustrated huff of air and grabs his sherpa jacket by the lapels. “Grab my ass,” she tells him, pressing another hard kiss on his lips.

Okay, _that_ he had to be mishearing. “What?!”

“She hates PDA,” Betty says in a rush, turning them so that her back is facing the window and then tugging his face back down to hers. “Grab my ass. Quick.”

_Fuck it_ , he thinks. If that’s what she wants, that’s what she’ll get. He ducks down again to kiss her, then lets the arm that’s around her waist slip down to the hem of her peacoat. His hand brushes against the back of her skirt, lightly at first and then with added pressure, until he flicks his gaze up and spots Alice with a disgusted look on her face. She closes the curtains with one quick jerk of the fabric, and Jughead drops his hands from Betty.

“Mission accomplished,” he announces to Betty, hoping his face isn’t as flushed as he thinks it is. “She looked furious.”

Betty tugs at her coat briefly, then readjusts her scarf and grabs his hand again with a confident, mischievous smile. “Good.”

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Betty gets pulled away by Alice again, and this time Jughead hovers near the door of the kitchen to eavesdrop. He hears snippets of the hushed, irritated voices _(letting that miscreant feel you up in public, Elizabeth, honestly_ is his favourite of the insults she levies about him - he’s never been called a _miscreant_ before) but tonight when she reappears, Betty looks satisfied instead of tense.

They go to bed an hour later, him back in his old t-shirt and her in her reindeer pants. Her arm brushes against his accidentally, and this time, he doesn’t pull away.

 

 

tbc.


	3. Chapter 3

The first notes of “All I Want For Christmas is You,” which Betty’s had set as her alarm for the past month, trill through her childhood bedroom at 8 a.m. on Christmas Day. As she slowly opens her eyes, she realizes that she’s wrapped in Jughead’s hold again, his arm tucked securely around her. It appears the previous night wasn’t a fluke - in his sleep, he’s a teddy bear, and she can’t help but find that endearing.

He lifts his arm as she reaches for her phone. Once her alarm’s off, she rolls over to face him. His blue eyes are soft from sleep. Betty tucks both hands beneath her cheek and says, “Hi.”

“Merry Christmas,” he replies.

She smiles. “Merry Christmas.”

Sunlight is streaming into the room, filtered by her thin, gauzy curtains, and the house, perhaps even the whole town, is silent, peaceful. Betty closes her eyes for just a few seconds, wanting to absorb the magic of the moment, to remember it.

Jughead is quiet, too, breathing steadily on the other side of the bed. The sound of his even breaths combined with the cozy warmth of her blankets is enough to make her want to fall asleep again.

“Should we get up?” he finally asks.

“Yeah,” Betty says, on a sigh. “But you don't have to get dressed if you don't want to. Christmas is the one day my mother relaxes her standards. We usually do presents in our PJs.”

He nods against his pillow. “Should I brush my teeth, or really go for the full offensive and go down there with morning breath?”

With a quiet laugh, she says, “Brush your teeth. I’m probably going to have to kiss you.”

“ _Have to_ , she says, like it’s such a trial.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” She lowers her lashes. “You’re a good kisser. Even when you’re faking it.”

“The real deal’s even better,” he teases, flashing her a smile as he sits up. He gets out of the bed and pads over to her bathroom in his bare feet, running a hand through his messy hair.

Betty stays in the bed for another moment, her heart beating low in her stomach like she wants that, wants it real.

It turns out that she only pressed snooze, and her alarm goes off again.

 _I don’t want a lot for Christmas,_ Mariah Carey sings. _There is just one thing I need._

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“It’s your first Christmas, baby girl,” Betty coos to her niece when Polly and Jason arrive, eagerly accepting Essie from her sister and balancing the baby against one hip as she sets a scone and a couple mini-quiches on a plate for Jughead before stirring a healthy scoop of candy cane ice cream into a cup of hot cocoa for him.

“Nice outfit, kiddo,” Jughead says, touching Essie’s little foot. She’s wearing a white onesie that has a hood with ears; it turns her into a tiny polar bear when it’s up.

The snapping sound of an iPhone’s camera going off makes all three of them turn toward Polly. “Christmas memories,” she chirps brightly, pocketing her phone.

Betty gives her eyes a little roll and hands Jughead his plate of breakfast and mug of cocoa, which he accepts with an amused expression as he says, “Thank you.” She smiles and tilts her head toward the dining table to indicate that he should go sit.

As soon as he’s gone and Betty’s selecting a scone for herself, Polly sidles up to her and wraps an arm around Betty, squeezing her in a half-hug. “I mean, who knows, right?” she says quietly. “He might be Uncle Jughead someday.”

Betty shoots her sister an unimpressed look. “We’ve been together less than a year.”

“I knew I’d marry Jason after six months.”

 _You were an idealistic teenager,_ Betty wants to say, _with your head in the clouds._ But she bites her tongue, because it’s Christmas, and because Polly was right, in the end - she did marry Jason.

They eat breakfast (Betty can’t help but beam at the totally blissed-out expression on Jughead’s face when he first tastes the candy cane hot chocolate) and then relocate to the living room to open the gifts piled under the tree. Betty and Jughead settle onto the love seat together. She still has Essie in her arms, and the little girl rests her head against Betty’s chest, her eyelids drooping, her blanket clutched loosely in her hands.

Most of the gifts are for Essie, but since the baby’s on the verge of a nap, the adults go first. Betty’s mother gives her a set of expensive skin care items, which, while luxurious, contains a suspicious number of anti-aging and wrinkle prevention products. Her father gives her two sweaters and a blouse, all of which were undoubtedly picked out by Alice, and Polly and Jason give her a pair of beautiful, sparkling silver heels Betty’s not sure she could walk in but that Polly says will be perfect for New Year’s Eve.

“Jughead, I’m so sorry we don’t have a better gift for you,” Polly says, handing him a prettily wrapped package. “But since Betty was keeping you a secret… ”

“Oh, you didn’t have to get me anything,” he says, holding the present somewhat awkwardly, as if he’s unsure about accepting it.

“Of course we did!”

Betty leans into Jughead’s shoulder a little as he opens it, curious about what it might be. It turns out to be a first edition of _On the Road._

“Wow,” he says.

“You like Kerouac, I hope,” Polly says earnestly, and Betty suppresses a smile. It’s hard to imagine him saying anything but _yes_.

“I do, yeah, I - ” Jughead’s sentence comes to an abrupt halt when he opens the front cover, and in a slightly strangled voice, he says, “This is signed.” He looks at Betty with wide eyes, and then at Polly. “I can’t accept this.”

“Sure you can,” Jason says. “We took it from my family’s library - we have an advance copy, too, so we won’t miss it.”

Jughead appears to be speechless, so Betty says, “Thank you,” on his behalf.

“Alice and I didn’t have anything ready, either,” Hal says.

“Through no fault of our own,” Alice interjects.

“Right,” Hal agrees. “But nonetheless - ” He hands Jughead a wrapped box.

It’s a fairly standard grooming kit, easy to find at any department store, a razor and shave gel and face wash. Jughead says a polite thank you and Alice smiles thinly. “Perhaps a haircut would pair nicely with a good shave,” she says.

Betty resists the urge to frown at her mother and instead smoothes her fingers through Jughead’s hair. “No, I like it like this,” she says brightly. “Ready for my gifts?”

Jughead seems to genuinely appreciate everything she gives him, all of which she bought with Archie’s help, primarily: a collection of moleskine notebooks in various neutral colours, a forest green sweater she thought looked incredibly comfortable, and two vinyl albums from bands Archie promised he loved. He puts the sweater right on, tags still hanging out of the neck, and kisses her temple. “Thank you, babe.”

“You’re welcome,” she says, and it’s her turn, then, to open the gifts he ‘got’ her, which were she herself purchased when she and Veronica ran around the city in preparation for this trip. She hands Essie over to Jason and starts unwrapping. There’s a large, soft scarf in pink-and-red plaid that will go well with her coat, a recent bestselling novel she’d been planning to buy anyway, and a necklace, a heart pendant in a deep blue faux-sapphire framed by white gold. Archie had picked it out - Veronica said that way it would be believable that it was actually from a well-meaning boyfriend without the good sense to buy something less cheesy.

“I love it, honey,” she tells Jughead, pretending she’s seeing it for the very first time. She extracts it from its velvety box, and across the room, Polly comments, “Oh, how pretty!”

Betty unclasps the necklace and holds it out to Jughead, feeling abruptly shy as she asks, “Put it on for me?” He takes the necklace and she shifts, turning her back to him and gathering the messy, loose waves of her hair up off her neck. After he fastens the clasp, his fingers linger for a moment against her skin.

She lets her hair fall back around her shoulders and resumes her previous position on the love seat, fingering the necklace’s pendant lightly. Polly and Jason are fussing over Essie, but her parents are looking at them and she can see the way one corner of her mother’s mouth is tilted downward. Maybe Betty should embrace the spirit of the season and be gracious, forgiving, but in truth the expression on her mother’s face gives her a thrilling sense of satisfaction.

She leans in and plants a soft kiss on Jughead’s mouth. As they pull apart, she flicks her gaze up to meet his, and says, quietly, “I love you.”

It almost surprises her, how perfectly he plays along. He curls an arm around her shoulder, drops a gentle kiss on her nose, and says, “Love you, too.”

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When Betty comes out of her room after changing for Christmas dinner - her mother’s lax attitude about presentation only applies to the holiday morning - she finds Jughead hovering in the hall.

“Oh god, what did my mother do?” she asks.

He smiles. “Nothing, don’t worry. She’s busy with the turkey.”

“Oh.” Betty sighs, relieved, and then offers him a sympathetic smile. “You just wanted a break?”

“Actually, I, uh - ” He rubs at the back of his neck before dropping his hand again. “I wanted to give you your gift.”

“You gave me gifts,” she says, touching her necklace to remind him.

“ _You_ gave you gifts. And you also gave me gifts - great gifts - which doesn’t seem fair. So I wanted to get you something, for real.” He pulls a folded envelope out of the pocket of his dark-wash jeans. “Sorry it’s not wrapped.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “Jughead, really, you didn’t have to get me anything. Just being here is - ”

“Betty.” A smile flits over his lips, and he presses the envelope into her hands. “Open it.”

“Okay,” she says. She unfolds the envelope and opens it, pulling out two tickets.

They’re tickets to the ballet, to _Romeo and Juliet_ , which is her very favourite, but that’s not all they are. They’re tickets to one of the shows in which Misty Copeland is dancing the principal role - the shows that sold out almost instantly.

Betty stares down at them, amazed. “How did you…?”

He shrugs. “I’m pretty good friends with a guy in the Arts section. He had a hook-up.”

She looks up at him. “But how did you know I… ”

“I remembered that night, last month, when you met us at the bar. You had to work late and you were upset because you missed the time the tickets went on sale and that meant you weren’t going to see your favourite dancer in your favourite ballet.” He quirks an eyebrow. “Veronica said the answer was tequila.”

She breathes a soft laugh. “It was _not_.”

“Yeah, you were pretty gone pretty fast,” he says, smiling slowly. “But hey - this is the answer, for real, right? You and Veronica can go together. Or you can take a date. I mean, they’re your tickets.”

“Juggie… thank you,” she says, feeling a little overwhelmed. “This is an incredible gift, I - I don’t even know what to say. Thank you so much.” She reaches her arms up and wraps them around his neck in a hug.

He returns the embrace, arms looping around her securely. He lets her hug him for a minute, trying to pour all her gratitude into that gesture, and then he bends his head to whisper in her ear.

“That book your sister and Jason gave me is worth tens of thousands of dollars.”

“The Blossoms are rich,” she whispers back. “Super rich. Jason meant it when he said they won’t miss it.”

“This town is just full of surprises, huh,” he sighs as they release each other.

Betty glances down at the tickets in her hand and smiles. “Yeah.”

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The Doileys arrive for dinner. Dilton brings flowers; Betty trims their stems and places them in a vase while studiously ignoring the looks he keeps shooting her, which are a mixture of wounded and angry. She refuses to feel bad: she couldn’t have made it any more clear, the last time they saw each other thanks to her mother’s scheming, that she had no interest in this set-up.

“So that’s him,” Jughead says in a low voice, leaning against the counter next to her.

“Mmhm,” Betty says. She gives him a bright smile when she turns to him, as if he’s said something to make her happy.

“You look like your mother when you fake smile,” he says, his brows knitting.

“Ouch,” she says, but she laughs, and his comment makes her smile turn genuine.

“That’s better,” he says in a soft voice, already leaning in to kiss her. It’s a soft, brief thing, that kiss, but Betty’s still smiling when they pull apart, and Jughead slides his hand down from where it rests at her lower back to give one of her ass cheeks a squeeze.

Her mouth falls open and she snaps it closed quickly, whispers, “You’re bad.”

“I thought that was what you were going for, Cooper,” he says, and stamps one more kiss against her mouth before he leaves her to finish arranging the flowers.

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Dinner is only a somewhat stilted affair - Essie in her high chair, all smiles and giggles, definitely helps ease the tension in the room. Jughead rests an arm along the back of Betty’s chair, calls her _babe_ when he asks her to pass the potatoes, and rubs her upper arm when Mrs. Doiley turns to them with a frown and asks how long they’ve been together. She thinks he’s trying to send signals in the way he’s acting with her, signals to Dilton that she’s very much taken, and it should annoy her, the way those signals are coded with misogyny, because Betty has never been the kind of girl who could be mistaken for any man’s property - but it doesn’t. It makes her feel strangely safe: safe from Dilton’s advances, safe from her mother’s silent but clear expectations, safe from the Doileys assessing her as the future mother of their grandchildren. She wants to dismiss that feeling as something embedded in the most primal part of her brain, but she’s not sure that’s what it is. Despite the amount she’s eaten, she feels a little hollow when Jughead stops skimming his thumb over her shoulder, needing both hands to butter a roll.

“Betty,” Dilton says after they’ve finished their pie. Her mother is already in the kitchen, washing dishes, and she’s experiencing hints of déjà vu. “May I speak with you?”

“Sure,” she says. Jughead rubs her back, and she turns to him, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I’ll be back in a few, honey.”

He nods, looking purposefully unbothered. “Take your time.”

She leads Dilton to her parents’ home office and closes the door so that they can have some privacy. “I’m sorry that you came over with… certain expectations,” she says, though that’s not her fault and she shouldn’t really have to apologize. “I thought it was pretty clear at Thanksgiving that things weren’t going to work out between us. My mother shouldn’t have told you or your parents otherwise.”

“Betty, I get it,” he says.

Her eyebrows shoot up. “You do?”

“Yes, it makes perfect sense now. You already had a boyfriend, we never had a chance to work.”

“Right,” she says slowly.

“Your mother’s opinion is one thing, and maybe she’d hoped you’d choose someone a bit more… ”

Betty crosses her arms. “A bit more?” she repeats, prompting him, not bothering to hide the dare in her voice that says _go ahead and insult him._

“Well.” Dilton clears his throat. “That’s beside the point, now. Your mother’s opinion is irrelevant, really, because - Betty, in four months I’ll graduate with my master’s in psychology. I’ve already been accepted into a doctoral program. And it is _obvious_ to me - your body language, the way you look, the way you’ve been speaking. You’re clearly _very_ enamoured with, uh… ”

“Jughead?” she supplies softly, but it’s a question in and of itself - is he really saying what she thinks he is?

“Yes. Jug Head. That’s my professional opinion, in any case.” He holds out his hand for her to shake. “I wish you all the best, Betty.”

She slips her hand into his. “Same to you, Dilton.”

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Back in the living room, coffee is being served, and her father and Mr. Doiley are playing checkers. Jughead is sitting on the ground, apparently tasked with this responsibility of redirecting a slowly crawling Essie when she gets too close to the fireplace. She takes a seat next to him and looks at the lights on the tree, trying to shake off the uncertainty she suddenly seems mired in.

“Everything good?” Jughead asks.

“Yes,” she says, reaching over and slipping her hand into his, intertwining their fingers. He gives her hand a reassuring squeeze.

Across the room, Dilton is watching them, something smug in his expression. Betty feels heat rush into her cheeks, and finds that she wants to punch him even more now than she did at Thanksgiving.

 

* * *

 

The kindest word that Jughead can think of to describe Dilton Doiley is that he’s a _dweeb_.

Jughead is beyond confused by the idea that Alice Cooper thought Dilton would be a suitable match for Betty. They’re both educated, sure, and maybe Dilton doesn’t have tattoos or a semi-criminal past, but he’s also insufferable, annoying, and much too high on himself. Two days with Betty has helped him to develop and cement his view of her, and it definitely does not mesh with his two-hour-old view of Dilton. She deserves nothing but the best.

He knows that’s not him, either - he’s only here _because_ that’s not him. Betty is a pretty spring tulip, appearing out of the frozen dirt to bring joy and beauty to the new season, and he is a thornbush, prickly and off-putting. But even still - Dilton is a goddamned dandelion, invasive and smelly and self-important.

(Jughead recognizes that his metaphor might be falling apart a little. He chooses to blame the after-dinner wine, but he still hates Dilton.)

Regardless, he now fully understands why Betty wanted him to be here to begin with. He can’t imagine handling the combination of Dilton _and_ her mother without some kind of shield.

Besides, he’s pretty happy to be that shield, especially after two days of practice. It’s a little unsettling how easy it’s becoming to play the boyfriend role for Betty. She fits perfectly under his arm and against his lips, and he’s caught himself wondering more than once throughout Christmas Day just how she’d feel in other circumstances, too.

They’re sitting on the floor together post-dinner; the fireplace is warm against his back and Betty is soft against his chest, his arms wound around her waist and one of her knees bent over his. She’s wearing a nice sweater, probably new for Christmas Day, made of cashmere or merino or something like that, but the real softness is the feel of her skin under his thumb, which he’s slid just beneath her shirt to press against her hipbone.

The Doileys seem only passively put off by their affection but Alice is visibly annoyed, which Jughead counts as a win. He’s not sure what Dilton and Betty spoke about, but Dilton seems fine with his psuedo-date snuggling with her apparent boyfriend by the fire, so it must have been at least a somewhat amicable conversation. He presses a kiss to the side of Betty’s head, ignoring the unfamiliar spark in his chest when she settles even further back into him, and sweeps his thumb in a small circle over her skin.

Polly rises to take the baby to bed, and Jason falls dutifully behind her. Mr. Doiley seems to take that as a cue that he, his wife, and Dilton should leave; Jughead’s not exactly going to miss them, but he still stands and bids a tactful goodbye before a vibration in his pocket gives him an excuse to step away.

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Jughead sneaks upstairs and slips into Betty’s bathroom before sliding his phone out of his pocket and answering it. “Merry Christmas, turd,” he says by way of greeting, closing the door and leaning against it.

“Ha ha.” His sister’s voice is loud and clear through the little speaker, as if she were right next to him instead of five hundred miles away. “Merry Christmas to you too, Jug. Sorry I’m a little late calling - wanted to wait til I was done with Mom and Grandma.”

“That’s okay, I was busy too.” Jughead moves Betty’s makeup brushes out of the way and then hops up on the countertop, settling his back to the mirror. “How was the day?”

“Same old, same old,” Jellybean responds, her voice casual, as if she can tell that a positive response would somehow upset him. _Which,_ he realizes, it probably would, if he let himself think about it for any length of time. He loves his sister, wants her to have everything in the world, wants her to enjoy the holidays, but it’s hard not to be jealous of the fact that she gets to celebrate with their mother, a woman who pledged to love her children and instead chose only one, and he’s here in a strange town pretending to be the boyfriend of a girl who would never date him in real life.

He’s here _because_ he’s the kind of person a mother wouldn’t love.

“How’s Archie’s?”

Jughead laughs uneasily. “Uh. I’m sure it’s fine. I’m actually not there, I’m - with a friend. As a favour.”

Jellybean makes a teasing _oooh_ noise. “A _girl_ friend?”

He raises his eyebrow, even though the only person who can see it is himself, and scoffs, “Are you seventeen or are you still ten?”

“Still ten,” she answers cheerfully. “So that’s a yes, then.”

Jughead sighs. “Yeah. But it’s not what you think.”

“You don’t know what I think.”

“I’m done talking about this, JB,” he cuts in, his voice a bit more stern than he’d intended. The line is silent for a few seconds, and he swallows. “You still coming up in February?”

“Yeah, if all goes well. I’m paying my own fees for the class trip, and Mom already signed the permission slip, so.”

Jughead smiles at that news, closing his eyes briefly. “Awesome. That’s awesome, JB. I can’t wait to see you.”

“I can’t wait to see you too, Jug.” There’s rustling on her end of the line. “Hey, I gotta get going, Lisa’s picking me up to hang out with her and her cousins for a bit. Say hi to your _girlfriend_ for me,” she adds, teasing laughter barely contained.

Jughead rolls his eyes. _Teenagers._ “Will do,” he says wryly. “Hey, JB--”

“What?”

“I miss you, squirt.”

“Aww. I miss you too, Jug. I’ll send you a picture of the pie I had tonight - it had a literal mountain of whipped cream on it, I swear, you would’ve been proud.”

He smiles. “Yeah, okay. Merry Christmas.”

“Back at ya,” she says, and then the call ends.

Jughead presses his lips together and leans his head back against the mirror, the phone still in his hand. He used to dream, as a kid, about having a normal family, one where holidays were spent together and there were traditions to follow and memories to look back on. That dream died somewhere in his mid-teens, when he first ran the gauntlet to join the Serpents, and he began to think of those kinds of families with disdain. Jealousy, really, is what he knows it is - _envy,_ because he’ll never know what that’s like. Even here, with the Coopers, he’s an outsider.

 _Okay,_ he tells himself, _enough._

Jughead sits up, hops off the counter, and puts his phone back in his pocket. He opens the bathroom door and is startled to see Betty leaning against the wall, chewing her lip absentmindedly.

“Hey,” he says.

Betty smiles at him. “Hey. Uh. I told Mom we were tired and gonna go to bed early, if that’s okay.”

“Oh.” Jughead’s surprised, and he’s not tired, but he can waste two hours on his phone better than anybody, so he shrugs. “That’s fine.”

“I just don’t wanna sit down there with them anymore,” she admits, leading him into her bedroom. “It’s been a long day of … Coopers.”

“You’re telling me,” Jughead jokes, walking over to the window seat. He pulls his pajama pants out of his duffel bag and turns to look at her. “You tired?”

Betty picks up her pajamas as well. “Not particularly. My legs are a little sore, so I’m looking forward to stretching out, but I don’t know if I’ll sleep for awhile.”

He nods slowly, an idea sparking. “Well, I have my laptop. We could watch a movie in bed,” he suggests, feeling an embarrassing heat flush through his ears at his own words. It seems so intimate - _in bed_ \- like something a real couple would do. Which, he reminds himself, they are not.

But then her eyes light up and she nods fervently, and _fuck it_ , this is the new way he’s gonna go out.

“I’ll go change,” she says softly, then she slips through the door.

Jughead takes the opportunity to change into his pajama pants and undershirt. He’s sitting in her bed with his laptop open, plugging his earbuds in to the headphone jack, when the door opens and Betty pads through barefoot.

She’s wearing different pajamas today, but still Christmas-themed: red plaid flannel shorts, and a grey t-shirt that reads _only a morning person on December 25_ , which Jughead bets is the opposite of true. He smiles anyway.

Betty seems to realize what he’s looking at, and she grins and shrugs. “I went a little overboard with the holiday theme, and it really only feels suitable to wear them around this season. Don’t judge.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replies, winking at her.

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It takes them twenty-two minutes to decide on a movie. Betty vetoes every single movie in his Netflix queue, either because she’s seen it or because it’s not enough in the spirit of the season. Jughead ends up unilaterally choosing _It’s A Wonderful Life_ when Betty reveals that she hasn’t seen it, and finally, they settle back on pillows propped up against Betty’s headboard.

“I can’t believe you haven’t seen this movie,” Jughead declares. “You criticized me for still having _Stranger Things_ on my to-watch list, and you haven’t seen _It’s A Wonderful Life._ ”

“You’ve had _years_ to watch _Stranger Things_ ,” Betty insists.

 _"It’s A Wonderful Life_ is from 1946!” Jughead exclaims, wincing when Betty raises a finger to her lips and giggles. “Sorry,” he whispers, offering her one of his earbuds. “Headphone, milady?”

Betty’s giggles intensify. " _Milady_ ,” she repeats, poking his arm. “You’re such a dapper gentleman.”

“That’s right babe,” he says, stretching backward. He glances to her on his right and edges the laptop toward her slightly. “Can you see?”

She shifts a little in bed, biting her lip in concentration. “Yeah,” she says, but it’s clear by the lack of certainty in her voice that no, she can’t.

He lifts his right arm and slides it behind her so that he can grab her hip, then tugs her closer to him. She takes the hint and rests her head on his shoulder so that their line of sight is more aligned; Jughead’s arm drapes across her back, and he quietly asks, “This good?”

Betty slips one side of the earbuds in her ear and hands Jughead the other. “Yeah,” she says, nestling her cheek against his undershirt. “I feel like a teenager,” she says in a half-whisper, a giggle still in her voice.

 _Yeah,_ he wants to say, _me too._

She keeps talking. “Hey, who was on the phone, Archie?”

Jughead sets his jaw and swallows. “Um. No. My sister.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” she says, sounding a little surprised. “Is she-”

“Seventeen, and a little over hearing from her older brother? Yeah,” Jughead chuckles. “I texted her this morning, she was just getting back to me now. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to slip away like that, but she’s hard to pin down sometimes.”

“That’s okay, it was good timing,” Betty shrugs. The movie starts, and she’s quiet for a moment as the iconic opening scene with falling snow and prayers to angels plays out. When the angels start speaking about George Bailey and the alternating glow of the stationary galaxies begins, she quietly adds, “I’m sorry you can’t be with your sister today.”

His throat feels suddenly tight at her words, and for a brief moment, a startling heat prickles behind his eyes. He hadn’t expected that, and his eyelids feel momentarily heavy. “Me too,” he says softly, squeezing her waist.

The angel Clarence is sent for, begging for the chance to earn his wings, and all Jughead can focus on is the smooth curve of Betty’s waist under his hand and the careful way her knee is crooked against his thigh. She sighs into his undershirt, so slightly that a beat later he’s not sure it even happened, and his chest feels a little lighter.

“This is nice too, Betty,” he says suddenly.

“Yeah,” she agrees, tilting her head back to glance at him briefly, “it is.”

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Betty makes it an hour into the movie before it becomes readily apparent to Jughead that she’s fallen asleep on him. Jughead has absolutely no desire to move her, because even though he’s not actually sure what’s going on, he does know that this is the last time he’ll get the chance to have her with him this way, and he’s going to hold on as long as he can.

He finishes the movie, then takes great care in closing his laptop and setting it aside so that he doesn’t wake her up. Betty mumbles something unintelligible in her sleep, then turns and curls herself more tightly around him. Her hand slides up his chest and clutches his opposite shoulder, her knee raises, and Jughead sucks in a breath as he waits for her to wake up and roll away from him in horror.

It doesn’t happen, and Jughead lets himself sink down into the pillows, bringing Betty with him.

He stares at the ceiling for what feels like hours, one arm behind his head and the other wrapped tightly around his beautiful friend. His heart hurts and is swelling at the same time, and with this confusion that he finally falls asleep, the words of Pa Bailey top of mind: _all you can take with you is that which you’ve given away._

 

 

tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the response to this story so far. We are both blown away by how much you like this. More to come.
> 
> Please let us know how you liked this chapter! Your feedback is everything.


	4. Chapter 4

A soft “ _hey,_ ” beside her ear and the feeling of a hand pushing her hair out of her face before settling on her shoulder to give her a gentle shake wake Betty in the morning.

She opens her eyes slowly only to find Jughead’s face right in front of her own. They’re very close, their heads on the same pillow, close enough that she can clearly see the contours of the bags beneath his eyes. She feels tempted to reach out and smooth a thumb along one of them, as if that action could reach into the past and soothe whatever events in his history put them there.

“I think you fell asleep before you set your alarm,” he says quietly. “It’s eight-thirty.”

“Oh - crap,” Betty sighs. She scrunches up her nose and wiggles one hand out from underneath the blankets to rub at her eyes.

It’s then, once she’s a bit more awake, that she realizes she’s got a leg hooked up around his hips. Not only are their faces close, but their bodies are, too - intimately close, really. She blushes a little as she removes her leg, and tells him, “Sorry.”

“S’alright,” he says through a yawn. “I’m your boyfriend until we pass the sign that says _Thanks for Visiting the Peppiest Town in America_ , right?”

She smiles softly, her embarrassment fizzling away. “It doesn’t say that,” she murmurs, but it’s the first part of what he’s said, really, that holds her attention. _I’m your boyfriend until_. It sounds sort of like an invitation, or the granting of some kind of permission, like he’s saying that they can belong to each other until they get on the highway in a couple hours, like this, _them_ , is the status quo here in Riverdale, the reality of things, and is therefore uncomplicated, isn’t weird in any way.

The way he says that - it’s like he’s saying he’s enjoyed waking up with her, too.

She lets her eyes travel over his face for a moment, taking in the stubble on his cheeks and jaw, the particular shade of his eyes in the morning, and then she kisses him.

She inches forward, closing the space between them altogether, pressing her chest against his, and Jughead’s hand comes up to the center of her back, holding her there, and when he kisses her back she sighs against his mouth, relieved and pleased and _wanting_.

He’s been kissing her soundly, since they arrived here; there haven’t been any pecks. But there also haven’t been any kisses like the ones they share now, the slow exploration of each other’s mouths, the very soft sound he makes when she digs her teeth lightly into his bottom lip, the way his hand has slipped under her shirt and is ghosting over her ribs. Betty arches into his touch, trying to tell him it’s alright to move that hand higher, and he does, his fingertips so soft over the lacy fabric of her bralette that she can hardly feel them.

“ _Jughead_ ,” she huffs against his mouth, meaning to sound annoyed, but the breathlessness of her voice lessens the effect.

His lips curl into a smile against hers. “Shh, babe,” he murmurs, and nudges her gently until she’s on her back and he’s leaning over her a little, pressed against her side, fingers teasing in a way that has her gripping the fabric of his t-shirt in a fist.

Jughead’s in the midst of helping her out of her own shirt, peeling it over her head, when there are two cheerful beeps of a car horn outside, followed by the sound of tires rolling into the driveway. Jason and Polly - and likely Jason’s mother, too - have arrived for Alice’s traditional Boxing Day breakfast.

Betty clutches her shirt to her chest, breathing hard. “That’s my sister,” she says quietly.

Jughead nods. His eyes are fixed on her face, like he’s looking for something, but before she can figure out what that might be, or try to help him find it, he turns away. “I’ll go get dressed,” he says. His voice is rough at the edges in a way that makes her heart stutter.

“Okay,” she breathes.

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When Jughead returns to the room, Betty has composed herself and is dressed in a white sweater and jeans, her hair up in its signature ponytail as she packs her things into her suitcase.

“So, my mom usually does a big breakfast today,” she says, and then winces at the sound of her voice, which is overly upbeat. She tones it down a little as she adds, “But I thought we could skip it. There’s somewhere I want to take you.”

He shoves last night’s clothes into his duffel bag unfolded and lifts an eyebrow. “Colour me intrigued, Betty Cooper,” he says.

Once they’re all packed up, they head downstairs, Jughead helpfully carrying both of her suitcases. They set all the bags in the foyer and then head into the dining room, where her family is gathered.

“Hi, Mrs. Blossom,” Betty greets, going over to air-kiss each of Penelope’s cheeks. “Merry Christmas. This is my boyfriend, Jughead.”

“Yes, I’ve heard so much about your new young man, Betty,” Penelope says with a thin smile. She casts a sympathetic look in Alice’s direction, but shakes Jughead’s hand politely and wishes him a happy holiday.

“You’re up late this morning,” Alice says, handing Betty a mug of coffee and placing the non-fat milk within reach.

“We were just packing our things. I hate to miss breakfast, but we should get on the road. Jughead has a deadline to meet,” she ad-libs.

“You’re leaving already?” Polly asks sadly.

Alice slides her gaze past Betty’s left shoulder. “What is it that you do, exactly, Jug Head?”

“He works for the _Times_ , dear,” Hal says from where he’s sitting with baby Essie on his knee, not looking up from his granddaughter. “He told us the first night he was here.”

Alice’s eyes flash, and Betty feels a rush of affection for her father, for the man who so often bows to his wife’s will but occasionally surprises her by doing just the opposite: by teaching her everything he knows about cars, by arguing that six-year-old Betty could wear her hair in a ponytail instead of a bun for her ballet recital if the bobby pins were hurting her head, by accepting the tattooed man his youngest child brought home just because she declared that she loved him.

She goes over to him and bends down to wrap her arms around his neck in a hug and plant a kiss against his cheek. “Merry Christmas, Daddy.”

He puts a gentle hand on her head. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”

They say their goodbyes: Jughead shakes hands with her parents and Jason (who offers a fairly earnest-sounding _great to meet you_ ), and then is ambushed by Polly, who ignores his extended hand in favour of giving him a hug. Betty hugs her sister and her brother-in-law and then her mother, who places a hand on the back of Betty’s neck with a maternal tenderness that has Betty holding on for a moment longer than she planned to. Then she accepts baby Essie from her sister, peppers kisses all over the little girl’s face, and feels tears gather slowly in her eyes.

“You’re going to be so big next time I see you,” she manages to say around the lump in her throat, smiling at her niece despite the tears that are blurring her vision. Essie reaches a hand out, and Betty kisses her tender, miniature fingers very softly. “I love you so much, you know.”

Polly sniffles, too. “We’ll try to get to the city soon,” she says.

Betty nods and holds the baby close for another moment, Essie’s head against her shoulder, and closes her eyes. She feels Jughead’s hand land on her back, rubbing lightly, and she opens her eyes with a sigh, touching her nose to Essie’s forehead and breathing the baby in one last time before she hands her back to Polly. Jughead slides his hand around to her hip and tugs her a bit closer to him as she wipes her eyes.

They collect their things from the foyer as Betty continues to sniffle occasionally and then head out to the car. Alice hovers in the doorway, watching as they move down the walkway, and then calls, “Drive safe.”

Betty turns to nod at her, and Jughead turns too, offering her mother a two-fingered salute that he remarkably manages to make sincere rather than sarcastic. “Yes, ma’am,” he says, and tilts his head toward Betty. “Pretty precious cargo.”

She swats at his arm half-heartedly, and looks back at her mother as Jughead takes her suitcases to the car. She can’t decipher the expression on Alice’s face.

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She gives Jughead directions to Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe in a voice that’s still a bit choked. After he’s pulled into a parking space in the diner’s lot, he cuts the engine and turns to her instead of opening his door.

“You okay?” he asks.

She nods, blinking hard. “Yeah. It’s just - my mom might drive me totally crazy, but they’re still my family, you know? And it’s always really hard to leave Essie.”

“You love her,” Jughead says simply.

“Yeah,” Betty sighs. “I guess… I’m the baby of my family, so this is kind of new to me. I’ve never loved somebody like I love her. Like I’d fight a grizzly bear for her.” She offers him a watery smile. “Does that make any sense?”

He returns her smile with a wry one of his own, something in his eyes drifting away for a moment before all of his focus returns to her and he says, “Completely.” After a pause, he asks, “You want kids?”

She shrugs and then nods. “Probably someday.”

He nods, too. “I can see it.”

“You can see what?” she asks, flipping the visor down to look at herself in the mirror on its back, checking to see if her eyes are puffy. “Me as the kind of mother who sobs when she drops her kid off at college?”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” he says with a softness in his voice that makes her turn to him, but he’s looking at the diner by the time her eyes land on his face. “So what’s so special about this establishment, Betts?”

She flips the visor back up and unbuckles her seatbelt. “C’mon in and see.”

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“Am I dead?” Jughead asks, a new bite of his omelette already on his fork. “Did your mother murder me? Is this heaven?”

Betty giggles. “You haven’t even had a milkshake yet. We’ll have to get you one to go.”

He cuts into his second sausage. “Will you judge me if I order a hamburger, too?”

She shakes her head and calls, “Pop! Can we get a hamburger with everything, please?”

“You got it, honey,” he calls back.

Jughead watches the exchange with an eyebrow curved upward in amusement. “You’re pretty beloved in this town.”

She shrugs and says modestly, “It’s small. Everyone knows one another.”

“Whatever you say, _honey_ ,” Jughead replies, and Betty rolls her eyes before biting into her toast.

They eat in companionable silence for a moment, and then Jughead says, “So.”

Betty’s eyes fly up to his face, fearing that the next words out of his mouth will be _about this morning_. She thought they’d come to an unspoken agreement not to mention what had happened, and her stomach sinks at the thought of having to spend two hours in a car with Jughead after he’s gently had to remind her that he is not, in fact, her boyfriend.

(He’d kissed her back, she thinks, though there is another train of thought running through her head, making the terrible suggestion that he’d only done so because he felt sorry for her, for a girl who needed a fake boyfriend to keep her mother from effectively marrying her off, that he hadn’t want to embarrass her by turning her down right then and there.

But he’d felt her up, too. Could he have been feeling her up out of pity, was that really something he’d do?)

“Considering what I’ve learned in the past couple days, I have to imagine there are several ex-Riverdale High students who’d be happy to marry Betty Cooper. Why did your mom pick Dilton, of all people?”

The question tears Betty from her thoughts and makes her blink, the words registering slowly. As they sink in, she exhales slowly, blowing out tension. “He comes from a good family,” she says. “At least, by my mom’s standards. And she likes that he’s doing grad work in psych. I… I’ve dealt with some stuff. Still dealing, at times, really, but the worst of it happened in high school. Anxiety; depression.” She draws in a breath and pokes at a hash brown with her fork. “Self-harm, sometimes.”

Jughead’s eyes are very gentle on her face, a steady blue in the light coming in through the window, but there’s no pity to be found in them when she manages to look up at him once again. “We’ve all got our shit, Betty,” he says. “I dealt with mine by joining a gang. And then un-joining it.”

Her lips twitch into a little smile. “You know, with my mom, it’s about control, but I don’t think that’s all it is. Part of it is that… she loves me. I think she thought Dilton would take care of me, if I ever needed it.”

“She wanted to marry you to a doctor, not a husband.”

“Yeah,” Betty says, almost laughing. “Exactly.”

“Do you think she’ll try again?” he asks. “After this?”

Betty considers it for a moment. “No,” she finally says. “I don’t. I think this is… mission accomplished. Thank you, Jughead.”

He looks like he might be about to make a joke, but something softens in the shape of his mouth when he sees her expression, which she knows is wide-eyed and earnest in its gratitude. He gives her foot a little bump with his own beneath the table. “You’re welcome.”

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As they merge into the busy post-Christmas highway traffic, two vanilla milkshakes in the rental’s cupholders, Jughead says, “Alright. Since you took me to Pop's, whose commitment to a 1950s aesthetic and culinary skills were both everything I ever could’ve wanted… I’ll give you back your Bluetooth privileges.”

Betty grins and lets out a purposeful delighted gasp, teasing him, “ _Really_?”

“Yes,” he says, looking at her out of the corner of his eye as if to say _don’t make me regret this_.

She grabs her phone, hooks up to the car’s media system, and has Taylor Swift’s rendition of _Last Christmas_ blasting out of the speakers less than a minute later. “You know,” she says, trying not to laugh at the pained expression on his face, “if Pop’s makes its way into your novel, I expect to see my name on the acknowledgments page.”

He laughs quietly, frown fading away as he changes lanes. “You’ve got it.”

Betty puts on _Style_ next and can’t help but sing along. Jughead shakes his head at her, but the annoyed look on his face doesn’t seem entirely sincere. She lets the playlist cycle through a couple more songs, just to torture him, and it takes a great deal of effort to keep her expression neutral when he starts tapping the beat of one of the songs out on the steering wheel.

 _Everything Has Changed_ comes on and its opening lines fill the car: _All I knew this morning when I woke, is I know something now, know something now, I didn’t before._

Jughead’s fingers flex against the wheel. Betty turns her head to look out her window and sings along softly, “ _Your smile in the back of my mind makin’ me feel like I just wanna know you better, know you better, know you better now…_ ”

 

* * *

 

It’s a little strange to be back in the city.

In a way, Jughead feels like the last three days with Betty’s family were part of some alternate universe - or at least, certain moments of them definitely were. A universe where a girl like _Betty Cooper_ (smart, kind, beautiful) could conceivably bring a guy like _him_ (angry, sarcastic, probably a little pretentious) home for Christmas and have mostly everyone like him (except her mother, with great intention). He’s always had a bit of an emotionally-overwrought bend, at least when it comes to his own happiness (that much he can admit) but pure and simple, Jughead had just assumed that anybody he’d date would … kind of be just like him. Someone like _her_ was never in the cards.

She’s still not in the cards, he reminds himself, no matter how completely natural it had felt to play the role of her boyfriend for the better part of the last week. An arm around her shoulders, a hand gripping her hip, his lips on hers; it’s alarming just how easily it had come, and how different - but good - it was compared to any girl he’d ever dated. Like instinct, even if it wasn’t real.

Except this morning. This morning, he knows, was definitely real. Or at least it was to him, and after all, hadn’t it been _she_ who kissed _him?_ It had, he knows; it had been her, _Betty,_ who had encouraged his wandering hands, and had they not been interrupted, he’s not sure what would’ve happened, but he’s pretty sure he wasn’t the only one who was enjoying it.

Still, she’d made no effort to bring it up at breakfast or during the car ride home, so Jughead’s chalking it up to The Moment - being _in it,_ caught up, in love with an idea. He gets it. It's time to forget. The alternative is unreasonable; he can’t ask her out - not a girl like Betty. No. _That_ is definitely not meant to be, he knows that much.

He'll file it away into his mental folder of things that he thinks about only on particularly bad nights, when the darkness gets to be a little much and his usual coping mechanisms don’t work. Usually it's Jellybean as a kid, smiling and free of the jaded woman he sees in her now. Sometimes, on rare occasions, it's his parents - pre-implosion, though if he’d been more aware as a six year old he knows that bubble would burst too. And now, he can think about Betty, about her soft skin and her curves under his hands, and about those three days where for once, he was the sort of man who had a woman like _that._

They enter the Lincoln Tunnel, slowly since holiday traffic has taken the entrance to the island to a near-standstill, and Jughead glances over at Betty. “Back to our regularly scheduled programming,” he remarks.

She smiles, turning to face him. “Yeah, I guess so!” she chirps. “That was such a whirlwind. I can’t believe I have to work tomorrow.”

“Me too.” He inches forward, chewing his lip, and stares at the rear license plate of the cab in front of him. “Well, I don’t think I have to go in for very long, most people are still gone. But I do have a lot of writing to do, and then work on my book, maybe.”

“Oh yeah!” Betty exclaims, clasping her hands together. “You definitely need to show me a draft. If you want to,” she adds hastily, “I know that’s not everybody’s process.”

Jughead flashes a brief grin at her. “I’ve never done it before, really, but nobody has ever asked, either. When I get closer to being done a substantive amount I’ll loop you in. Sound good?”

She nods. “Sounds great. I’m a bit of a grammar freak but I’ll try to tone down on that for these purposes,” she giggles.

“You won’t need to,” he answers with confidence, “my grammar is flawless.”

Betty doesn’t say anything, so he glances over and sees his reply met with a raised eyebrow and a skeptical expression. “I sincerely doubt that,” she says with a cluck of her tongue. “But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

Jughead’s jaw drops. “Elizabeth Cooper,” he teases, “how dare you accuse me of needing an editor.”

“Everybody could use an editor, Juggie,” she informs him, the nickname rolling off her tongue as smoothly as if she’d been using it for years. “Grammar, spelling, consistency, character arcs - I’m a full-service fake-girlfriend.”

“Fake ex-girlfriend,” he corrects. “We’re nearly back in Manhattan, so I think our relationship’s over now.”

“Aww.” Betty gives him a look of mock sadness. “Well, we had a good run.”

“Three days,” he agrees, chuckling. “Probably my best relationship.” Traffic begins to flow again, and he sighs in gratitude. “Holy shit, _finally.”_ He’s not claustrophobic. He’s not. He’s just very uncomfortable with the idea of being stuck in a tunnel beneath a river, even if he _is_ with someone whose company he very much enjoys.

Betty’s hand settles on his forearm briefly, and she squeezes gently. “Aww, I’m sure that’s not true.”

Jughead glances over at her. Her eyes are wide and earnest, like always, and he has to look away. “It is, sort of.” He shrugs. “Not in a sad way, just - what was it, ten months? That would’ve definitely been the longest, and any girl I’ve ever dated was a little … I dunno. My years in the gang were - there’s lots of girls, but none of those people, myself included, are particularly well adjusted.” He chews his lower lip briefly, then releases it slowly from between his teeth. “This would’ve been a really healthy, nice relationship to add to that sad roster, is all.” He clears his throat. “If it was real.”

Her hand falls from his arm. “Yeah,” she responds, and then it is silent again.

He drops Betty at her apartment, because even though she’s given away the presents that filled one of her suitcases, she still has to bring the empty bag back with her, and he’s not going to let her to take it on the subway again. It may not be heavy anymore, but it’s still awkward, and he’s not entirely without common decency.

She waves goodbye with a smile on her face and a gentle press of her lips to his cheek. “Thank you,” she tells him seriously, and there is no doubt about her sincerity.

Jughead swallows and forces a smile back. “Anytime,” he says, and then she is gone into her building and he is driving all the way back to the rental lot on the west side, his mind swirling and unfocused.

He returns the vehicle, then trudges somewhat listlessly to the subway station, grabbing a hot dog on the way because _why not,_ it’s past noon. He picks at it on the train back to his apartment, eventually finishing it just before he has to switch trains to head downtown. He texts Jellybean a photo of a discarded, dirty Santa hat, captions it “mood”, and receives a response that teasingly says, _aren’t you supposed to be over your emo phase by twenty-five?_

They banter back and forth for a little while, and by the time he gets back to his apartment, Jughead’s post-holiday blues are starting to fade.

He’s surprised to see Archie home when he steps through the door. Jughead’s pretty sure that he remembers his plans as being staying at his dad’s in Albany for a few days, then hopping a flight to Chicago to see his mother for an equally brief amount of time before coming back to New York in time for whatever ridiculous event Veronica was likely dragging him to for New Year’s Eve.

“Hey man,” Jughead greets, dropping his duffel on the floor and walking toward Archie. “Thought you'd be on the way to the Windy City by now.”

Archie, who is laying on the couch with his guitar absent-mindedly resting in his hands, glances at the old clock on the wall before replying. “Flight boards at three, so I’m not leaving quite yet. I was gonna originally go from Albany, but Dad had some shit to do in the city so he drove me in and I switched my flights.”

“Ah.” Jughead sinks into the old armchair that they've carried around with them through three apartments, relishing its familiar comfort. “How’s your dad?”

“Good. We missed you though. There were leftover spring rolls and Dad was confused.” He strums once, a light, easy C-chord, then sits up suddenly. “Hey, how did the whole fake-boyfriend thing go? Did you piss off Betty’s mom?”

Jughead chuckles. “Oh yeah,” he says. “She hated me. _Jug Head,”_ he mimics, shuddering exaggeratedly. “Nah, it wasn’t that bad. Besides her mom, I think I actually won over the majority of Betty’s family.”

“Must’ve been a shock to see _you_ show up with Sandra Dee.”

He burrows back further into the chair and slings a leg over one of the arms. “I think she was actually mostly mad that Betty had made a decision for herself.”

Archie stares at him, frowning a little. “That doesn’t sound healthy.”

 _Understatement of the year_ Jughead thinks, but he’s done talking about this. It’s Betty’s family, her business; he knows he wouldn’t want the Jones family drama freely discussed.

Archie seems to understand that that line of discussion has ended, because he sets his guitar to the side and waggles his eyebrows suggestively before asking, “So, you and Betty…”

Jughead raises an eyebrow at him, not sure if he wants Archie to drop it or if he wants him to do the exact opposite and press further. “What?”

“She’s pretty.”

 _Duh._ “Uh huh.”

Archie gives him a look. “Come on, Jug. Did anything happen?”

Jughead drops his head backward and stares at the ceiling. “Shouldn’t you be braiding my hair for this conversation?”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He sounds confident, and Jughead’s not sure that it’s that misplaced. “Am I gonna be an uncle?”

Jughead lifts his head up and stares at Archie with a sarcastic expression. “Yes, Arch. In the span of three days, I managed both to seduce your girlfriend’s best friend _and_ impregnate her.” He shakes his head, then glances away again. “We … had fun,” he tells him carefully. “I’m glad I went. How’s that?”

Archie grins and stands up. “That’s awesome, bro.” He looks at his phone briefly, then sighs. “Better get my shit together and head to the airport.” Then, turning his gaze back to Jughead, he adds, “You deserve to be happy, bro. If Betty - well, if there’s something there - I hope you go for it. And don’t worry, Ronnie won’t hear anything from me. I can’t imagine she’d be … helpful, initially.”

That makes Jughead chuckle a little. “Thanks,” he says, nodding his appreciation. He watches Archie stride out of the room, then closes his eyes and exhales completely, letting the joys of an afternoon nap quell the raging storm of thoughts in his mind.

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He gets McDonald’s for supper and eats it alone in his apartment under the glow of _Stand By Me_.

Jughead _likes_ solitude. He’s always liked reading and writing and other solo activities, and generally skews further to the introvert side of a personality scale. But tonight, perhaps due to the contrast with the previous three days of Cooper family togetherness, he feels lonely.

It’s not new, necessarily, but the negative connotation he’s imposing today _is._ Barring the presence of a few key people (like Archie), he’s spent much of his life feeling isolated - socially and otherwise - from most of society, including his family, and he’d always felt like it ‘worked for him’ in a masochistic kind of way. Now that he’s a bit older, he can recognize that much of that was self-imposed: it was part of an _I’m both too good and not good enough_ schtick that he even he is tired of, as if the darker and more brooding he was, the more interesting he’d be, the more evolved. He’d even joined the gang out of a misplaced sense of righteousness, not connection, and had quickly learned that that wasn’t quite how it worked.

But cynicism, he now knows, is simple. It’s much, much harder to be an idealist, to live in a world where things can and will be better, where he could connect with someone and have them embrace him in return, where people have good intentions and not everyone leaves. He’d always felt like he was the product of his own environment, blaming his anger on a world that had, he felt, abandoned him; but now, after spending time with Betty in _her_ world, he realizes just how full of shit he is.

If she can grow up under the thumb of a mother who’s willing not only to play puppeteer for every aspect of her life but also to go as far as using her daughter’s mental health issues as a weapon in some kind of sick battle for control, and _still_ be the kind of person who smiles at the sunshine through her window instead of grumbling at it blinding her, then he can get over himself a little too.

His phone buzzes when he’s halfway through his large fries. Jughead wipes his hand on his jeans and picks up his cell, smiling when he sees that it’s a message from Betty.

 _I told Veronica about the shoes Polly gave me_ she’s typed, _and she’s now bombarding me with possible New Year’s Eve outfit choices. Send help._

Jughead chuckles and thinks for a minute before replying. _You looking for my help with clothes or Veronica?_

 _She’s still in St. Bart’s! I don’t know how she has the time to go Pinterest-ing. Look._ Attached to the text is a screenshot of Betty’s received photos gallery, where there are nine different pictures of models, all wearing some variation on a short-skirt-and-skimpy-top combo. He swallows, imagining Betty’s legs in any of the possibilities, and texts back before he can second-guess himself.

_Kind of derivative, but I don’t hate any of those skirt lengths on you._

Jughead regrets it as soon as the message is sent, because _fuck,_ how creepy does he sound, and how could she possibly read that and _not_ have it mentally kill any last vestiges of his boyfriend image-

His phone buzzes, interrupting his downward spiral. He lifts his head from his hands to open the message, because _come what may,_ and all that.

He has to read it twice to believe that the words on the screen are actually there. _If I got cold, would you warm me up?_

Everything he wants to say by way of reply seems like too much, and for the first time, Jughead finds himself wishing that Archie, previously King of Tinder, was here to help him with distance-flirting. “Get your head out of the gutter,” he mutters to himself, standing up. He walks to his window and stares at the bodega across the street, trying to think of something not-cliche to text Betty.

He waits too long, and she sends another message. _Only if you wanted, I mean,_ it says. _Sorry._

“Shit.” Jughead’s thumbs tap rapidly. _I want, babe. That is NOT a problem._

He glances up, still panicked, as if Archie will reappear by the sheer force of will. He doesn’t, and Betty’s response - _then what’s the problem?_ \- comes quickly, accompanied by a picture of a near-empty glass of wine.

Jughead decides that honesty in the best policy. _The problem is that I’m an idiot._ He attaches a photo of his half-eaten fries for good measure, hoping to lighten the mood.

It works. _Ah, I love a man with salty fingers,_ Betty responds. _Next time, let me know, and we can share!_

He drops his body on the couch, back flat and cheeks wide with a grin, feeling hopelessly like a fourteen-year-old and unable to muster the energy to be even a little ashamed about it.

_Next time._

 

 

tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please validate us! Leave a comment :)


	5. Chapter 5

Betty doesn’t know what’s wrong with her, exactly, but she’s quite certain Christmas is to blame.

In the morning, she drinks her coffee in her apartment’s small kitchen, staring at the wine glass she’d washed the previous night after her buzz had worn off, which is sitting upside down in the drying rack. She’s not usually bold like she was last night - in her working life, sure, and when she cares about something, but not with guys. She was a bit of a late bloomer, and she’s always been a bit shy, so she can only blame last night’s forwardness on Christmas. It’s the aftermath of all the twinkling lights, of the glow of the fireplace, of the sound of shoes crunching through snow. It’s the fault of her baby niece’s giant snowsuit, and how Jughead looked when he held her in it. It’s just because of mistletoe and carols and the cozy bliss of Christmas morning.

It has to be Christmas that’s making her feel like this, that made her bed seem empty and cold when she woke up, because if it isn’t Christmas and the magic spell it always casts, then it’s Jughead - and that’s not what it was supposed to be with him. It’s not what is _was_. The three days they’d spent together were a charade for her mother’s benefit, and they’d agreed to that on the drive back, when they’d joked about a break-up.

She sighs, murmurs, “Get it together, Cooper,” and tosses the last dregs of her coffee down the sink.

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She’s squinting at her computer, examining a piece of copy one of her bosses really wants to be fifty characters shorter, when her phone rings. She’s surprised to see that it’s not Veronica or her sister but Jughead, and she swipes the screen to answer, spinning away from her computer to give her eyes a moment of rest. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey yourself,” he says, and the gruff sound of his voice makes her worry that her knees would go weak if she were standing. “How’s your work day?”

“Almost over. How’s yours?”

“I’m just leaving.” He pauses, then adds, “I have a question for you, if that’s okay.”

 _It’s just Christmas_ , Betty tells herself, determined not to let those words make her nervous. “Sure; shoot.”

“If you were a seventeen-year-old, what would you want for your birthday?”

She blinks, surprised by the question, but she manages to connect the dots within a few seconds. “You’re trying to figure out what to get your sister?”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Her birthday’s the ninth, so I don’t have much more time to get something in the mail. We don’t get each other Christmas gifts, but she’s my kid sister, so I usually try to get her something good enough that it sort of counts as a birthday-slash-Christmas present. I’m kind of stumped this year, though. Archie asked Veronica for her opinion before the holidays, and her suggestion was a tennis bracelet.” He makes a somewhat huffy sound that has notes of both amusement and annoyance. “Which apparently doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the actual sport of tennis.”

Betty smiles. “I’ve never met your sister, but I _was_ once a seventeen-year-old girl, so I can probably help you figure something out.” She glances back at her computer for a moment and then suggests, “I can probably wrap things up here in about fifteen. Do you want to come meet me? We can go shopping.”

“Yeah, that sounds great,” Jughead says, his voice rich with relief. “You’re the best, Betts.”

She bites her bottom lip to keep from smiling wider. “It’s no problem.”

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Jughead meets her in the lobby of the office building in which she works, and Betty gives him a warm hug in greeting. He squeezes her back and tucks his face into her neck for a moment; when he pulls back, he notes, “You’re wearing the scarf.”

“Did you really expect me not to wear the gifts I got myself?” she teases.

“Touché,” he says, holding the door open for her as they head outside.

“You outdid me, though,” Betty tells him. “You shopped for me better than I shopped for myself.”

“In fairness to you, I didn’t really shop. Today’ll probably be a testament to how bad I am at that.”

“I have faith in you, Juggie,” she says.

“That’s dangerous,” he says, and there’s a lightness in his tone that makes it clear he’s kidding around, but it’s layered over something earnest and self-deprecating. She remembers his face on Christmas Eve, illuminated by streetlights as they walked the road that lead to a piece of her history while he shared a piece of his, and frowns faintly.

“No,” she says softly. “I don’t think so.”

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They head to Nordstrom Rack; Jughead grabs her hand once to tug her along as they hurry to cross a street before the light turns red and doesn’t let go for two blocks. When they’re inside, Betty browses through the women’s shirts while Jughead, who is already too warm, wrestles out of his winter coat.

“Considering what I know about you,” she says. “If I assume your sister is somewhat similar… she’s probably like… _this_.” She pulls a shirt off a rack and holds it out; it says _Brunch Is My Cardio_ in sparkling pink letters.

Jughead stares at her, clearly trying to keep his expression from morphing into utter horror, and Betty only lasts a few seconds before she starts to giggle.

“I’m _kidding_ ,” she says, and the smile he gives her -

 _It’s just Christmas_ she thinks, flipping somewhat forcefully through the next few shirts on the rack. One makes her pause, and she extracts it for Jughead to look at, raising one of her eyebrows.

It says _Eye Rolling Is My Cardio_ in plain black lettering, and his mouth forms a frown that edges toward a pout. “I resent what you’re insinuating about me, here,” he says. “But… it’s a maybe.”

Betty grins, triumphant, and tucks the shirt under her arm.

She keeps moving through the store, trying to channel the likes and dislikes of a girl on the border of adulthood who is, according to her brother, “punk but mostly in an ironic way,” “cool beyond her years,” and “pretty into music.” In the jewellery section, she hunts until she finds a pair of earrings composed of a treble clef for one ear and a bass clef for the other, and also selects a pair of skulls dangling from thin silver chains as an obvious choice.

It’s in the shoe section, though, that she really scores, finding a pair of cute ankle boots with a little bit of studded detailing. They’re a brand she herself really likes, so she knows they’ll be pretty durable.

“Do you happen to know your sister’s shoe size?” she asks Jughead, not really hoping for an affirmative answer.

But he surprises her by saying, “Uh, one second,” she digging his phone out of his pocket. She moves closer to him and watches as he opens a note on his phone called _JB._ The first line of it says _shirts: small or size 4_. There are a few more lines, and then a couple favourite colours listed. The sight of that list makes Betty’s breath catch in her throat, makes her want to drop the boots in her hands and cup his cheeks in her palms instead and kiss him hard before wrapping him up in the tightest hug she knows how to give.

“Size seven,” he reports, looking up at her. “Betty - ” He frowns and touches her elbow. “You okay?”

She nods, offering him a soft smile and lifting the boots up a little higher. “Size seven. Jackpot.”

He takes one of the boots and studies it for a moment before he says, sounding impressed, “These are good. Really good.”

She tucks her hand gently into the crook of his elbow. “Let’s go check out the headphones.”

They find a dark purple pair in a brand Betty’s heard is good, and at that point, she’s pretty satisfied with their options. “Do you think some of this stuff will do it?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Jughead says. He looks at the headphones and earrings in her hands and the shirt and boots he’s holding, his expression thoughtful. “Should I - should I just get all of it?”

“All of it?” Betty repeats. She eyes the price tag on the headphones; they’re discounted, but not exactly inexpensive. Not wanting to overstep, she asks, tentatively, “Is that maybe a bit… much?”

“I don’t know,” he sighs. “I don’t know. Jellybean and I were really close as kids, but it was harder once we lived in separate places - obviously. Especially with my mom… feeling the way she did. But it was one thing when - ” He clenches his jaw for a beat. “She’s just… older, now. She’s turning into her own person, and I sort of feel like I barely know that person. I get to see her so rarely, but I want to show her that I still… ” He shakes his head. “I just want to get the right thing.”

Her heart aching for him, Betty says quietly, “Juggie, she knows that you love her. You don’t have to get her gifts to prove that. You just have to call her on her birthday and tell her as much.” As she looks into his face steadily, waiting for some sort of sign that he’s heard her, that he believes her, she notices that his eyes are a darker shade of blue than they were moments ago. It occurs to her that, now that she knows Jughead better, he’s not quite as hard to read as she once assumed he was. Now that she knows what to look for, there’s so much to see.

Jughead draws in a breath. “Headphones, boots, skull earrings,” he decides.

“Exactly what I would’ve done,” she declares, and her chest feels so full when he laughs.

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They wander around for a bit after Jellybean’s gifts are purchased. Neither of them suggests a destination, but Jughead says nothing about heading back to his apartment, and Betty has no desire to go home immediately. Manhattan, at this time of year, is one of her very favourite places, especially after the sun has set and all the decor seems to give the world a glow. During the holidays, not even the bustle of the streets bothers her; when everyone is all bundled up, their faces occasionally lit by yellow-gold or red or silvery-white light, even businessmen barking into bluetooth headsets or groups of teenagers dawdling and jostling the crowd seem endearing to her rather than irritating.

 _It’s just Christmas_ , she thinks yet again. This time of year makes her susceptible to affection.

“Have you ever spent the holidays here?” she asks Jughead.

“No,” he says. “I’ve always gone back to Albany with Archie. Have you?”

“No; I’ve always gone home, too. I think it would be nice, though. To stay in the city.”

“I’m sure it would.” He wraps an arm around her, tugging her closer to steer her out of the path of a woman who is managing to speed-walk down the slushy sidewalk in four inch heels. While she’s pressed against his side, he says, “Hey, Betty?”

She turns to him and finds they’re nearly close enough to kiss - all it would take is the upward tilt of her chin. “Yeah?”

“I’m _starving_.”

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They choose a Vietnamese restaurant at random and settle into chairs on either side of a tiny table by the window. The steam rising off Betty’s bowl of pho and the way Jughead’s knees keep bumping against hers create a sense of warm contentment that she feels all the more thoroughly when she looks outside and sees the puffs of passersby breaths in the cool air.

As they eat, they talk about everything and nothing. Jughead tells her a bit more about his sister and about their childhood; she leans in, listening intently, as he recalls the last Christmas his family was together. She reaches across the table, grabs his hand, and squeezes it, but before she can say anything in response, he rolls back his shoulders, some of the tension in them visibly seeping away, and starts telling her about Christmases with Archie and his father in Albany, which involves a series of much lighter stories.

“Now tell me about your history, Miss Cooper,” he says after he finishes recounting the time Archie accidentally used bread flour when he tried to make an apple pie from scratch, leaving Jughed and Mr. Andrews to suffer through strangely textured, somewhat burnt bites of dessert. “I wouldn’t be mad if you wanted to start with a story featuring your old cheerleading uniform.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” she says on a laugh, but he’s still holding her hand atop the table, and the slow movement of his thumb across her palm is maddeningly distracting.

It’s not just Christmas.

She does tell him about cheerleading, about her teammates, about how long it took her to master her straddle leaps to the satisfaction of the mean-girl captain. She tells him about high school generally, about her best friend Kevin, about her favourite teacher and the boy she’d dated back then. By the time their server comes to clear away the dishes, she’s even told him about her prom.

As they wait for their bills, they move on to discussing their favourite books and television shows and inevitably end up on the topic of _Game of Thrones_. Jughead’s favourite character is Arya; Betty’s is Sansa. She tells him that she hates when people pit the sisters against one another and he agrees, a glimmer appearing in his eyes a moment later as he teases her, “But Arya has a _sword._ ”

Their server reappears, sets a single bill down on their table, and vanishes again immediately. Betty reaches for it, but Jughead beats her to it, plucking up the piece of paper.

“We should have asked for separate bills when we ordered,” she says softly. She peers around the restaurant. “When the waiter comes back I’ll ask him to - ”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jughead says, pulling his wallet out of his pocket. “It’s getting busy in here. I’ll pay.”

“I think I have some cash that I can give you,” she says, going to reach for her purse after he pulls out a card and sets it on top of the bill.

“Betty, hey, no,” he says, holding out a hand to stop her. “You paid for my breakfast at Pop’s.”

“That’s different, you were doing me a favour.”

“And you did me one today, so it’s only fair.” When she opens her mouth to protest again, he says, firmly, “I insist.”

She considers offering to pay for her meal one last time, but she ultimately relents, swallowing down the words. “Thank you,” she says instead. She folds her hands in her lap and shifts her legs around so that her knees are no longer touching his, the server’s assumption making her feel self-conscious about the way she’s interacting with him. She clears her throat and then says, in a brighter, nothing-awkward-to-see-here voice, “Speaking of TV, did you start watching _Stranger Things_ yet?”

“We’ve been back in the city for a day,” he says, smiling. “I’ll get to it soon.”

She narrows her eyes slightly, not entirely sure she believes him. “I _really_ think you’ll like it, Juggie.”

His smile widens. “Alright, alright. I swear I’ll start it the minute I get home.” He laughs and gives his head a fond shake when her expression doesn’t change. “What, you don’t believe me? I can text you a play-by-play.”

Betty toys with the edge of her napkin and bites the corner of her lower lip. “How about you come over to mine and watch the first episode?” she asks, and then feels the urge to cringe. Did she really just invite him to _Netflix and chill_? She means to add something teasing about needing to see it to believe it, but the words never make it out of her mouth.

Jughead begins to play with his credit card, tapping its edge against the table like he, too, needs something to do with his hands. He nods, and his knee presses into hers again. “Sure.”

 

* * *

 

Betty is holding his hand at the subway station.

(Sort of.)

 _Okay._ In the physical sense, _yes,_ her palm is pressed against his, but it didn’t get that way out of pure romanticism, so he’s not sure if it counts.. She’s standing closely, too, her shoulder brushing up against his, their boots only inches away from touching. Her face is neutral as her eyes scan the platform, darting every now and then to the monitor that indicates the time until the next train’s arrival.

It’s packed, partly because it’s the holidays but also partly because it’s Union Square in Manhattan and it’s _always_ packed. He’d been jostled unexpectedly by a man rushing by him in a hurry, then nearly run over by a woman with a stroller, only to be rescued by Betty grabbing his hand and tugging him toward her. He’d made a crack about her being his knight in shining armour, which had led to a brief discussion where they both proclaimed Brienne of Tarth as the true Queen of Westeros.

Now, it’s fallen silent between them, as she’s apparently letting the platform traffic entertain her, and he can’t think of anything new to say.

Jughead doesn’t really mind, so long as she doesn’t, and the way that she’s still clutching his hand tells him that Betty is okay with their quiet connection.

The train arrives, and Betty begins to pull him toward a car. Jughead follows obediently, but at the last minute, he sees someone that he thinks he knows out of the corner of his eye. _Sweet Pea._ He can’t be sure that it’s him, but Jughead only has a few seconds to make a decision, and he decides he’s not willing to risk having to engage in any kind of confrontation. So he tugs Betty toward him and leads her one car over to the right, slipping inside just as the doors close.

She leans against the glass and looks up at him curiously, having had to let go of his hand to hold the pole for balance. “Everything okay?”

Jughead nods. “Yeah. Sorry. Thought I saw someone I’d rather avoid.” He looks down at her and smiles. “No big deal.”

Betty nods slowly, seemingly understanding his dilemma. “Ex-girlfriend?” she guesses.

That makes him laugh, the idea that he’d made a dent in the life of any girl large enough that he’d have to avoid her, this proverbial _ex_. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “Uh. Ex-friend. From my days with the Serpents.”

Her eyes widen, and she shuts her mouth. “Oh,” she says after awhile, quieter. The train stops at Astor Place and they move out of the way so that people can disembark. Betty makes her way to a now-empty row of chairs, slides into the one nearest the window, and pats the seat beside her.

Jughead occupies it, a strange feeling quelling in his chest.

“Were … the Serpents, uh - were they dangerous?” Betty asks, chewing her bottom lip and looking at him with anxious eyes, like she’s not sure if she’s allowed to ask.

He knows what the real question is: was _he_ dangerous, did _he_ do bad things, is _he_ a criminal. And the answer, unfortunately - “Yes and no,” Jughead says, keeping his voice a bit lower, because - well, because. He stares at her hand, the one he’d held earlier, which is now resting on her knee, and he takes it instinctively. “I was a stupid kid when I was involved with them, and most of the dirty shit is handled by the adults, the hard guys. Some of those guys are definitely - well, I wouldn’t want to run across them in an alley, let’s say. I don’t know that anyone I ran with was really all that bad. Maybe now, though.”

“I can’t believe you were a member,” she says, playing with his fingers. “I mean, I can believe it by looking at you, but now that I know you a little better, I - you’re so … gentle.”

Jughead looks over at her, the corner of his mouth quirked upward in amusement. “Gentle?” he repeats.

Betty’s cheeks redden. “I don’t mean that in a - it’s not meant to emasculate you, or anything-”

“It doesn’t,” he interrupts. “I was never cut out for the life. Not _really_. I had a whole Serpent-prince thing going on for a bit, because my dad was a high-ranking member, but that’s not the life I wanted.”

She nods, quiet again.

“It’s not the life he wanted for me, either.” Jughead clears his throat, feeling oddly emotional. He didn’t visit his father on Christmas - doesn’t usually, either, but _still_. He makes a mental vow to go soon. “He wanted something better.”

“Better?”

Jughead squeezes her hand and glances at her with intention, hoping he’s not barking up the wrong tree. “Yeah,” he confirms. “Better.”

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Betty’s apartment is a lot like her: pretty, feminine, and clean.

It’s a cute studio apartment in the Financial District, with bright white walls, clean lines, and a comfortable-looking couch in a soft yellow colour facing a moderately-sized wall-mounted TV above a low bookshelf. There’s a double bed in the corner that’s only slightly visible behind a large shelf comprised of sixteen cubes that Jughead immediately (and embarrassingly) recognizes as being from Ikea. Twelve of the cubes are filled with more books, and in the remaining four are photographs, notebooks, and a vase of flowers.

He’s sitting on the couch in question, his back leaning against an impossibly soft knit blanket in a pure white colour, marveling at how organized everything seems to be. She has a laptop sitting out on the miniscule kitchen table, but otherwise, nothing appears to be out of place.

He’s intentionally averting his eyes from Betty’s pseudo-bedroom area, because she’s gone to change out of her work clothes and into something more suited for watching TV on the couch. In his need to stare at literally anything to keep his mind off the fact that Betty is half-naked only feet from him, Jughead’s gaze falls on a pair of running shoes near the door, neatly lined up beneath a small table on which is placed a set of in-ear headphones, an arm-band that's clearly meant to hold a phone, and thermal headband.

She runs, he thinks. _Obviously._ Legs like hers don't come from being idle.

The sound of shuffling feet draws Jughead’s eyes toward Betty, who has reappeared from the corner of her apartment. She’s dressed now in leggings and a long sweater in a rich blue colour, her ponytail loosened so that tendrils of hair fall around her face.

She’s impossibly beautiful, he thinks, and is so preoccupied with her pretty smile that he almost doesn’t notice her fluffy socks, which are printed with pineapples. They make him grin, and he looks at them as he remarks, “Dreaming of a more tropical location?”

Betty sits down beside him, her knee brushing his with what he hopes is intention. “No,” she replies, “I don’t mind winter. Especially if there’s someone around to keep me warm.”

Jughead raises an eyebrow at her. “Is that a hint, Cooper?” he asks, to which Betty shrugs good-naturedly. The repressed part of Jughead that’s foolish enough to be hopeful about such things swears that she’s blushing a little, too, and that her smile is a shy one. He sets his hands awkwardly on his knees and asks, “So, what’s the whole appeal with _Stranger Things?_ Fill me in.”

“I can’t believe you’re this behind the times. I thought you were a pop culture king,” she teases, bringing her feet beneath her and angling her knees toward him. “It’s basically _E.T._ meets _The Goonies_ meets _Poltergeist_. An ode to eighties paranormal classics, only it ranks right up there with the best of them, in my opinion.”

She’s speaking with an excited passion that Jughead can’t help but think is cute as hell; her eyes are bright, sparkling, her cheeks vibrating. He glances to her mouth as she talks and has a flashing memory of the previous morning, laying in her bed in Riverdale, when they were most distinctly _not talking_ , and has to force himself to look away before he does something foolish. Like kiss her again.

“Juggie?”

His eyes snap back to hers. “Huh? Sorry. What?”

She’s smiling, one eyebrow slightly raised in amusement. “I asked if you wanted a snack or anything before we start the episode. You drift off a little there?”

Jughead stares at her. In the moment, he finds himself unable to be anything but completely honest. “You’re distracting.”

This time when Betty blushes there is no mistaking it. The tips of her ears turn pink, her cheeks flush, and she ducks her head, settling it against his shoulder. She takes the remote, prompts Netflix to begin playing the first episode of _Stranger Things,_ then wordlessly sets it down on the coffee table and, to Jughead’s surprise, slips her arm through his.

Distracted as he is by Betty leaning up against him, the show itself turns out to be fairly engrossing, and by the time that Benny the kind diner owner is killed, Jughead is hooked. He looks over at Betty, who seems to be watching both the episode and his reactions to it, and nods his approval.

“Okay, it’s pretty good,” he relents, moving his right hand slightly to squeeze her bent left knee.

She smiles, seemingly satisfied with that, and touches her forehead to his shoulder again. “I knew you’d like it. Now shush, they’re going to go looking for Will in the rain.”

“Yes ma’am,” Jughead says, redirecting his attention to the screen. He realizes after the passage of a few more minutes that he’s been absentmindedly stroking her leg with his thumb, and panics. Does he stop, and thus reveal that it had been a subconscious move, or does he continue, even though it may be making Betty uncomfortable?

He settles for stopping, because even though she doesn’t seem completely disgusted by him, the last thing Jughead wants to do is make Betty feel awkward. She’s been so kind to him today, helping him find several gifts for Jellybean even though he _should_ be capable of shopping for his little sister by this point; he doesn’t need to repay her by feeling her up.

Unless she’d like him to, in which case Jughead is very willing to reevaluate.

Betty makes an executive decision on the matter ten minutes after Jughead’s thumb stills. She lifts his right arm and tucks herself beneath it, gently rests her palm on his leg, then lets his arm settle around her shoulders. “Can you grab me the blanket behind you?” she asks in a half-whisper, as though there were other people around to be disturbed by her volume.

Jughead obeys, wordlessly handing her the white throw. Upon seeing her plans to spread it across their legs, he snatches the end of it to stop her. “Hang on,” he mutters, also keeping his voice muted. He shifts backward, dropping his arm from her shoulders to her back, then twists and slides his left arm beneath her legs so that he can lift her up enough to extend his legs along the length of the couch. He gently sets her back onto his lap, then props himself up with pillows that are stacked against the arm of the couch. “Lay down, baby,” he tells her, letting the term of endearment slip out of his mouth.

It doesn’t seem to bother Betty, who bites her bottom lip into a smile and settles herself on her left side, half-wedged against the back of the couch and half-atop Jughead. He takes the blanket from her and tosses it over their legs, then sits up a little to adjust it. In the process of laying back down, his hand brushes accidentally against her ass; he freezes, looks at Betty, and opens his mouth to apologize.

Somehow, instead of saying “I’m sorry”, he tilts his head up and kisses her.

She leans into it, flattening herself against him. The kiss is soft, slow; there’s a more measured pace to it than the slightly more hurried moment they’d shared the previous morning, when the ticking clock of their fake relationship seemed all-too present. _This_ is something different, something without pretense, and _god,_ he wants this to go on forever.

It doesn’t; Betty breaks the kiss for air after a bit more time, but her hand has made its way under his shirt and onto his abdomen and she makes no effort to remove it. Instead, she lays her cheek back to his shoulder, face turned toward the TV, and begins to watch as the second episode of _Stranger Things_ starts to autoplay.

Jughead follows her gaze. He’s a little confused, but his chest is warm with an unfamiliar sort of happiness. His hand is still resting on the curve of her ass, and he makes no effort to move it as the episode begins.

Somehow, impossibly, he gets into the episode again. He wants to make a remark about how the show really _must_ be good if he's still interested in it even with her on top of him, but something about the air around them makes him feel like if they talk about it, it'll end, and he wants to live in this moment for as long as she'll let him.

“I'm seeing the _E.T._ parallels now,” Jughead says, finally cutting the silence between them. “I definitely see where you get that from.”

Betty lifts her head briefly, smiles, and then lays it back down. “Just wait, it gets more obvious. Got a favourite character yet?”

“Hmm, I'll reserve judgment for at least another episode.” He presses his fingers against her ass ever-so-slightly, allows his thumb to move, and hears her breath catch for a split second. “Who's your favourite?” he asks.

“Umm…” She trails off, her voice sounding somewhat pinched. Her head turns a little, then Jughead feels the faint touch of her lips pressing against his shoulder. He takes that as encouragement and squeezes her ass again, this time with intention. “I like Mike,” she answers, kissing his shoulder again before she lifts her head and looks at him. “And I like Dustin.”

Jughead’s eyes dart across her face, searching for any sign of what she wants from him. God, he wishes he could read minds. “Dustin seems cool,” he agrees, and then she’s kissing him again.

This time, Betty starts to scratch at his skin beneath his shirt. He sits up halfway, tearing his lips from hers only long enough for her to tug his shirt off, then pulls her back down on top of him. She squeals into his mouth as his hands slip beneath her sweater, and when he leans his head back to give her a questioning look, she giggles, “Your hands are cold.”

“Guess _you’re_ warming _me_ up,” Jughead says, flashing her a grin before she drops her mouth to his neck. And then - _bliss._ She’s incredible: her tongue, making patterns on the sensitive skin over his pulse point; her nails, tracing the faint lines of his abdomen - lines that only exist in the first place because of Archie, which Jughead files away for future gratitude; but more than anything, it’s her voice, making pleasant noises in his ear, that is driving him crazy.

Betty begins to slow her movements against him, which for the sake of his own pride is probably a good thing; any more sliding against his body would’ve resulted in some serious sixth-grade-embarrassment territory. She abandons his neck and kisses his lips again, then gives him a shy smile and tucks herself back against his shoulder.

Jughead lays with her against him for two minutes before he realizes that he’s clearly missed some major plot development. “Mind if I rewind a few minutes?” he asks, reaching for the remote.

She nods her assent, and Jughead restarts the episode from ten minutes prior. He pulls the white blanket up around their shoulders, then pushes his hands back underneath her sweater. He lets his hand rest on the back clasp of her bra and turns his attention back to the episode, trying hard not to be overwhelmed by Betty’s presence against him.

He wants to kiss her again too, but she’d been the one to lay back down, and he’s not going to push his luck.

They watch the rest of the second episode, then the third after that, and by the end Betty is heavy on top of him, her breathing slow and steady. He knows that he should slip off the couch, that he should carry her to bed and then leave, but he can’t bring himself to do anything besides lay underneath her and drown in the feeling of the curve of her waist beneath his hand.

He glances up at the ceiling, noting the fresh paint that’s there, and wonders if Betty repainted it and all the walls when she moved in. It seems likely; he’s seen where she grew up, and even though her family is a little off, the house is beautiful. The _town_ is beautiful.

 _She_ is beautiful.

Too much so, Jughead realizes, for him. The kind of girl that keeps an apartment as pristine and pretty as this, who’s used to decorating cookies on Christmas Eve and has a smile that reaches _all_ the way to her eyes like hers does, is the kind of girl that’s too good for him. It’s a simple fact, one that he can readily acknowledge; girls like Betty don’t date guys like him. At most, they do this - live on the edge for a brief time, make out a little, run their tongues along the edge of a tattoo, and then move on to the quarterback-type to have cute little kids who will grow up to marry their own cheerleaders and quarterbacks.

He’s living in a fucking dreamland.

She’s still asleep on him, her face buried in his neck now, letting out little sighs as she dreams. _God,_ does he want to be one of those dreams.

But then the Netflix screen changes to a slideshow advertising other Netflix originals, and Jughead swallows hard. Time to go.

He rolls to the side, taking extra care to disrupt Betty as little as possible, then tucks the white blanket around her shoulders and turns the TV off. He grabs his shopping bags, shoves his feet into his boots, and leaves while she’s still asleep. On the elevator down, Jughead contemplates sending her a text to say goodnight, or going back and leaving a note of some kind, but he can’t imagine what he’d possibly say at this moment other than _thanks for your Netflix account_ , and that’s not going to help his cause. He’s always prided himself on being self-aware, and he knows that he needs to go home before he lets the black cloud rain on her, too.

Jughead reaches the lobby of Betty’s building, pausing briefly to look at the poinsettia by the doorway, then strides out onto the street. He glances up at the pattern of windows, wondering which is hers, then sighs and heads to the subway.

 _It’s just Christmas,_ he thinks, shaking his head.

_Move on._

 

 

tbc.


	6. Chapter 6

“I don’t know, Veronica,” Betty sighs for what is probably the twelfth or thirteenth time, twisting around to check out her ass in Veronica’s floor-length mirror before she faces her reflection again, self-consciously plucking at the material of the minidress she’s wearing. It leaves virtually nothing to the imagination.

Veronica, who is perched on the edge of her king-sized bed in a deep purple flapper dress with lines of black glittery thread woven through it that shimmer every time she moves, is unbothered by Betty’s protests. “Put on the shoes,” she prompts, flipping open a compact to examine her lipstick.

Betty slips her feet into her new silver heels obediently, swaying just a little at her new height. The heels do what heels are supposed to do: their extra inches cause her back to arch, emphasizing both her cleavage and her ass, two parts of her body her dress is _already_ calling attention to with its little upside-down triangle cut-out between her breasts and its low back. She supposes that from a certain perspective she does look sexy - she can appreciate what the heels are doing for her calf muscles, and beneath the two thin criss-crossing straps that fall over her shoulders and down to her hips, her back does look good. But still -

“Isn’t this a bit _much_ , V?” she asks. “What about that long-sleeved velvet shirt you liked with the - ”

“Betty,” Veronica cuts in, “You’re a smoke show.” She gets up and comes to stand next to Betty in front of the mirror. “We’ll only be this hot for so long,” she says. “And wouldn’t it just be _cruel_ to deprive the world of the sight of those legs you’ve run so many miles for?”

“I don’t run to - ”

“I know, I know, but you’re gorgeous, you’re in your twenties, it’s New Year’s Eve - have some fun, B, yeah? Make a couple guys drool. You deserve someone amazing, but even if you don’t find Mr. Right tonight, there’s nothing wrong with Mr. Right _Now._ ” Veronica’s lips quirk into her trademark mischievous grin, but as she reaches up to carefully adjust a curl of Betty’s hair, which is partially pulled back, her eyes get just a little _too_ sharp, and she says, “That is, unless you already have your eyes on someone.”

Betty frowns slightly, tugging the hem of her dress downward. “Who would I have my eyes on?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Veronica uses the tip of her pinky finger to remove a tiny smudge of mascara from beneath Betty’s eye. “Perhaps the broody young gentleman you just had a whirlwind faux romance with.”

“ _Faux_ being the operative word.”

“Hm.” In the mirror, Veronica’s eyes scrutinize Betty’s. “You know, no one would fault you if that fake relationship gave you some real thoughts. Jughead’s not my type, but I see his appeal. You shared a bed; you kissed. And I _know_ how much annoying one’s mother can be a turn-on.”

“ _Veronica_ ,” Betty says, flushing red beneath the soft pink of her blush.

“Triumph is an aphrodisiac,” Veronica says breezily, without an ounce of shame.

“Maybe for you.”

Veronica makes another _hm_ -ing sound, this one longer, and Betty’s cheeks continue to burn. “Of course, I shouldn’t assume,” she murmurs, but Betty recognizes her tone all to well - that voice, no matter the words it shapes itself into, is a Veronica Lodge code that translates to _we’ll circle back to this later._ “You need lipstick!” she adds, cheerful now, and steps away from Betty to rifle through her vanity.

While Veronica’s occupied, Betty adjusts the neckline of her dress and studies herself in the mirror, searching for something beyond the surface that reflects her own image back to her. She loves Veronica, loves her dearly, but the last time she approached Veronica with a conundrum, she ended up with Jughead. She worries that if she approaches Veronica with Jughead positioned _as_ a conundrum, she’ll end up in a tattoo parlour while Veronica peruses the internet for the appropriate inked design to put on one’s body to tell an ex-gang member you’re into him before she can even blink. Loving Veronica means knowing that she sometimes goes _too hard_ \- Betty’s uncharacteristically tight and bright dress is a prime example.

But even if she can’t yet be honest with her best friend, she has to be honest with herself, and the honest truth is her feelings for Jughead go a little past faux, edge a little closer to real. Whatever it was, between them, it hadn’t stayed in a bubble, left safely behind in Riverdale. It had followed them back to the city, through an afternoon of shopping, through dinner, through a Netflix binge, his hand on her ass, his lips on her lips. They were alone, then. There was no audience, no show to put on.

She felt sort of foolish the next morning, when she woke up and he was gone, a feeling that was allayed somewhat when, still on her couch, she texted him _did you like it?_ and his immediate reply was _yeah_ ; she suspected his double-speak was the same as hers. But when she’d asked _are you going to finish the season?_ , he’d said, _definitely_. Just _definitely_ , and she was abruptly so many things at once - confused and annoyed and dissatisfied in more ways than one - that she got right off the couch, stepped into some leggings, and went for a run.

 _Definitely._ She had no idea what that meant. Was she supposed to do all of the flirting? She was running out of ways to suggest he keep her warm - couldn’t he meet her halfway? _Definitely. Your place or mine?_ or _Definitely, when are you free?_ or even _Definitely, your couch is comfy._ She couldn’t get anything from four syllables that were equally applicable to feeling her up again or finishing off the Netflix series. Had she known things were going to get so complicated, she’d have picked a different show, a _bad_ one.

“Let me see you,” Veronica says, breaking into her thoughts, and Betty parts her lips automatically for lipstick application.

He’ll be at the club Veronica’s chosen tonight, she knows, tagging along after his friend just like she so often tags after hers.

Same place, same time, like always - but now, so much is different.

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Veronica’s chosen venue for the evening is glitzy, full of sparkle and bubbling with chatter. It isn’t quite Betty’s scene but it’s the kind of place where Veronica glows, even in dimmed lighting, and Betty is usually content to bask in the outer rays of that glow, close enough to feel them, far enough that she doesn’t get drawn into the focus that Veronica so easily demands.

Tonight, however, after she’s handed her jacket over at coat-check with just a bit of reluctance and let herself be guided through the crowd via the arm Veronica’s got hooked into the crook of her own, she finds herself the focus of a gaze that’s on her and her alone, not a single bit of it drifting to her right, where Veronica stands. The gaze belongs to Jughead, who’s looking at her with something she can’t pinpoint in his eyes, flaring them dark, his adam’s apple bobbing as he and Archie weave their way over.

“Hey!” Archie greets with a broad bright smile, at the same time Jughead says, “Holy shit, Betty.” His words are soft, softer than Archie’s exclamation, softer than the beat of the bass in the music that’s playing, but she hears them, and the slight strain in their syllables, loud and clear.

She lowers her lashes, shy but also, admittedly, a little pleased. “Veronica dressed me,” she explains.

“She did a great job,” Archie says, sliding an arm around Veronica’s waist. “You look awesome, Betty.”

“Thanks,” she says, smiling at him.

Veronica leans into her boyfriend. “Let’s find champagne, Archiekins,” she says, flicking her gaze over to Betty and Jughead for only an instant before she steers Archie away.

As they head off, Betty takes a couple steps closer to Jughead. His hand comes up and cups her elbow very lightly, very briefly. “Holy shit yourself,” she teases, tilting her head to one side as she takes in the way he looks in his deep grey suit.

He huffs a laugh, lifting his hand and rubbing at the back of his neck. “This is quite the shindig,” he comments.

She nods. “Even fancier than Veronica’s party of choice last year.”

“Yeah,” Jughead sighs, not sounding particularly excited about that fact. He moves in closer to her and ducks his head so that his lips are by her ear. “Want to get out of here?” he asks, and a thrill runs through her body like a lightning bolt, making her feel electric. “I’ll buy you a slice of pizza.”

It’s her turn to huff a laugh, then, releasing the breath she hadn’t known she was holding as she tilts away from him just enough to look into his face. “I’ll let you buy me a drink,” she bargains.

His hand comes up to the small of her back, his fingertips pressing into her bare skin. “I can do that.”

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They spend the whole evening together, standing on the same side of the small, high circular table upon which they’ve set their drinks. Jughead doesn’t drink much - he’s still nursing the same glass of Belgian beer when Betty’s finished her second amaretto sour. He notices her noticing, and tells her, “My dad’s an alcoholic. He got sober in prison.”

She nods, and lifts her hand to rest it next to his atop the table, hooking her pinky finger lightly over his. She doesn’t say anything as trite as _I’m sorry to hear that_ but asks him, instead, “Do you see him often? Your dad?”

“A few times a year. I get out there when I can.”

“That’s good,” Betty says softly. “He must be proud of you, Jughead. Does he know you’re writing the next great American novel?”

He smiles faintly. “He doesn’t, because that’s factually incorrect.”

“I think you should let me be the judge of that.”

“Oh, yeah?” His smile grows, and he slides his hand fully under hers before flipping it over so that their fingers can entwine. “You don’t quit, do you, Betts?”

“Rarely,” she tells him honestly. “Especially not when I’m intrigued.”

Jughead’s gaze drops momentarily to her lips. He knows what she’s saying - it’s not just his book that intrigues her - and she knows that _he_ knows. She turns so that she’s facing him fully, hoping he’ll make a move.

He mimics her gesture, turning toward her. His hand releases hers and lifts instead, coming up to her cheek, his thumb skimming over her jaw. Her breath catches sharply in her throat.

“Your parents should be proud of you, too,” he says quietly. “You’re kicking ass here in the city, all on your own. You’re so smart and thoughtful and - you’re so beautiful, Betty, on top of all that.” A half-frown tugs one corner of his mouth downward. “You don’t need moisturizer that erases fucking _early signs of aging_.”

It’s now what she was expecting, but his words make her heart swell so much that a brief ache lodges itself in her chest. “Thank you, Juggie,” she murmurs.

He nods, and removes his hand from her cheek slowly, his touch lingering before he drops it down to his side. “Do you want another - ”

They’re both startled by the sound of many voices yelling out, _Ten!_ Betty glances at the nearest TV screen and sees that they’re officially in countdown territory, seconds away from the new year. “Midnight,” she says as she looks back at Jughead.

He nods again, and then there’s a little quirk to his lips, almost boyish in the hope it contains. “Think it’s bad luck for your fake-ex to be your new year’s kiss?”

“No,” Betty says simply, without hesitation.

“Me neither.”

His breath is on her face and his hands are on her hips when the crowd yells _One!_ , and then he kisses her as voices declare _Happy New Year!_ and confetti and balloons float down from the ceiling. Everything feels like white noise to Betty, who loses herself in his kiss, in the way it’s both gentle and thorough, the way he gives her everything and demands nothing in the movement of his mouth against hers.

They pull apart slowly, pressing their foreheads together for a beat. When Betty finally manages to meet his hazy eyes with her own, he says, “Happy New Year,” as he shakes a couple pieces of confetti out of his hair. His grip on her hips tightens briefly before turning soft again. “I enjoyed being your boyfriend, Betty Cooper.”

He goes to pull his hands away from her, but she puts her own hands on his forearms, stopping him, and inches forward so that his hands are securely on her hips once again. She draws in a breath, and when she says his name, “Jughead Jones,” the words come out on a sigh that’s almost wistful.

She runs her hands over his arms, imagining the tattoo that runs up one of them, the snakes and the vines and the piece of teenage rebellion and deeply-felt hurt written on his skin in words that can only be understood if you have the privilege of being told their meaning. She slides her hands upward and over his shoulders. “I am not lost,” she tells him, her voice just above a whisper. She links her hands behind his neck. “And neither are you.”

Betty presses her lips to his. There’s something tentative about her kiss, but he returns it with enough ferocity that her skin sparks with warmth. After a moment, he smiles against her mouth, like it’s just registered for him, what she said, and that makes her smile, too. Their teeth bump and they both laugh without really breaking the kiss; Jughead pulls her closer to him, so that they’re pressed right against each other, and Betty winds her arms more firmly around his neck. He kisses her so hard that he bends her backwards a little, and she puts a hand to his cheek, angling his mouth against hers, her tongue slipping past his lips.

Balloons litter the floor and waiters are circulating with trays covered in champagne flutes, but they ignore it all, his hands skimming over the skin her dress lays bare as her arms slide beneath his suit coat to hold onto him more tightly. Jughead kisses her until she’s nearly lightheaded with breathless giddiness, and even then, Betty doesn’t want to let go.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s New Year’s Eve, and Jughead _really_ doesn’t want to go out, per usual. Veronica is making him and Archie go to some party downtown, and while he’s not down for her planned events on the best of days, New Year’s Eve is a whole other ballgame. It’s crowded, especially the closer one gets to Times Square, and there’s so much stupid expectation simply because it’s the end of the year. Gotta kiss someone at midnight, gotta get drunk off your ass, gotta have the time of your life. New Year’s parties might as well have a sign out front reading _have fun, it’s mandatory,_ because at least that would be accurate.

As much as he doesn’t want to show his face at the party, he _will,_ of course, because Veronica is hard to say no to and because he, like the good friend he is, cannot deny Archie anything. Besides, this year might be slightly different. Just a little. He’s _kind of_ into Betty (fucking _gone,_ actually, on the rare occasion that he’s honest with himself), and he’d be lying if he said that knowing she’ll be there isn’t at least a consideration in going to the party.

(And shaving, and the spritz of cologne he’d borrowed from Archie. _Fine.)_

He and Archie get there first, but the girls’ arrival follows not too far behind. And what an arrival it is: first Veronica, in a predictably ostentatious dress that shimmered when she moved, and then -

Betty. _Wow._

The only thing Jughead can think of when he sees her is disappointingly basic and physical in nature, but christ, _that dress_ \- it leaves nothing to the imagination, somehow highlighting every perfect part of her body at the same time. As though, after days of pretending to be her boyfriend, kissing her for show, and then kissing her for real, that’s what he needed: to be _more_ aware of her body.

On the upside, she quickly seems to indicate that the appreciation is mutual, running her hands across his chest and leaning into him unnecessarily as they sip drinks and suffer through this party together. They kiss at midnight, his idea, prefaced by a semi-joke about him being her fake-ex, and she doesn’t turn him down. His apprehension about not being the kind of guy for her is as present as it was two days ago when he’d left her apartment, but her eyes are earnest despite the slight buzz that she has and after the kiss breaks, Jughead can’t help but confess that he liked pretending to be her boyfriend. He wants to keep going but can’t, afraid that if any more is vocalized, it’s all over. That was too much already, too far, too bold, too-

Betty says his name, quotes his tattoo, runs her hands up his arms, and then kisses him.

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He wants nothing more than to keep kissing her - except perhaps to drag her away to a private room and do a little more than that - but Jughead’s keenly aware of the presence of both of their best friends at this party, and although his would undoubtedly be chill about this, _hers_ would not be.

(In the best way; Jughead assumes Veronica would be supportive of them - after all, this was her idea to begin with - but he also assumes that it would be expressed very enthusiastically, and he just wants to take a second to enjoy the moment with Betty before Veronica’s very particular hurricane breezes through.)

At the same time, he’s finding it very difficult to stop touching her, so they retreat to a table that’s off to the side and slightly away from prying eyes. Betty is leaning into him heavily, and although both of them quit drinking about an hour prior, her bright eyes are still tinged with a little bit of warm, boozy haze and he supposes she’s likely a little sleepy. Jughead drapes an arm around her, one hand trailing up her arm; his other hand rests on her knee, which has hitched itself over one of his thighs. Betty’s head is tilted back slightly, shoulders resting in the crook of his arm, and every now and then he steals a kiss.

“I missed you the other morning,” she says to him suddenly, her heavy eyelashes lifting.

Jughead can feel her eyes searching his face. He glances away. “Yeah, I…” He trails off, not sure what to say - _sorry, my insecurities are a mile long and everything about you triggers them?_ Hardly. He settles for offering her a small smile, then squeezes her knee.

When he looks back at her, he finds that she’s still examining him intently, her brow furrowed ever-so-slightly, jaw relaxed. “Would’ve been nice to wake up with you there,” Betty adds in a quieter voice.

Jughead swallows. “I wasn’t sure that’s what you wanted.”

He didn’t intend it to be a full-stop kind of statement, but Betty’s frown is deep and immediate. “What?” she asks, her back straightening a little. “We made out and I fell asleep on you and you thought I didn’t want you there in the morning?”

“I don’t know,” he tells her honestly, feeling a knot in his chest start to slowly unravel. He’s not sure if the rope will strangle him afterward, but he can’t leave it where it is anymore. “Girls like you don’t typically … I’m not the kind of guy you take home to Mom. _Obviously,”_ he adds, tapping her knee and offering a somewhat wry smile, wanting to add, _that’s how this happened_.

It was intended to make her laugh, but Betty’s frown only deepens. “You met my mother. You think I’d be as judgemental as she is?”

“No!” Jughead says quickly. “That’s not - I figured, I guess, that you had fun, and I had fun, and maybe that’s all you wanted.”

Betty lifts her leg off of his, causing his hand to drop from her knee. It flops to his own leg, limp. He fights a wince. “Is that all _you_ wanted?”

“No!” he says again, shaking his head, fervently this time. _“No,_ baby. I - fuck, I’m bad at this.”

She crosses her arms. Jughead tries not to notice the effect it has on her cleavage. “Yes, you are,” she reports in an annoyed tone, but the corner of her mouth is quirking upward slightly, and it gives him hope.

Jughead presses his lips together and takes a deep breath, trying to figure out how best to phrase what he wants to say. He curses his self-destructive streak, another great inheritance from his father, and finally blurts, “You’re incredible, Betty. You’re smart, and beautiful, and being your boyfriend for three days was - I was happy, really happy. Even if it was fake. I want it to be real. But-”

_But I’ve seen this movie, and you don’t end up with me._

“Stop,” Betty breathes, reaching out and placing a hand over his mouth. “That was perfect - you want it to be real, stop. Me too.”

Jughead’s eyes snap to hers, his ears ringing slightly. The possibility that he’d misheard crosses his mind, but then there she still is, eyes widened with hope and a glint of happiness and probably still a little alcohol, and it calms his mind. He kisses her palm, then says, softly, “Oh.”

_Or maybe..._

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They leave without saying goodbye to Veronica and Archie, who have been on and off the dance floor for the last hour and a half. Jughead assumes that Archie will crash at Veronica’s, leaving his apartment free for them; but after twenty minutes of trying and failing to hail a cab _and_ order an Uber (surge pricing and all), it becomes increasingly likely that they’ll have to walk a bit of a distance. Betty’s apartment is closer, so the plan changes.

Jughead looks down at Betty’s feet warily, taking note of the high heels she’s still wearing. Her dress is so short, it’s not even visible beneath her wool coat. He knows from direct experience already tonight that her legs are bare; there’s no way they can walk all the way without her freezing, even though the evening is fairly mild for early on January 1st.

“You’ll warm me up,” Betty assures him, her hand clutched tightly in his. “We can stop wherever is open along the way. It’s not _that_ far.”

“Are you sure, babe?” Jughead asks, cupping her cheek in his palm. He searches her eyes. “I don’t mind waiting longer.”

Betty kisses him before responding, a hard, warm press that promises something more. _“I_ mind,” she purrs, sliding her free hand up his chest. “I want to go home.”

 _With you_ is implied, and god, Jughead has no idea how he lucked into this last week with her.

“Well, that’s hard to say no to.” Jughead pecks her lips and hands her his beanie. “At least cover your head, okay?”

She accepts it with surprising eagerness, shoving it over her blonde waves with a broad smile and a slight giggle. “Oh!” she gasps, clutching her chest in faux shock, “I’m _overcome_ with the sudden urge to wear plaid -”

“Ha ha,” he says dryly, sliding an arm around her as they begin to walk the blocks to Betty’s apartment building. “You love my plaid.”

Betty shrugs innocently. “I suppose. I’m partial to you without a shirt altogether, though.”

“I _knew_ you were only in it for my tattoos.” Jughead slows their pace, very briefly, so that he can kiss Betty again. Even with his old beanie over her head, she’s beautiful. He wonders how many people have told her that, and how many she’s actually believed.

They make it two blocks before ducking into a deli that is somehow not busy. They buy two cups of bad coffee, then Betty dances on the spot, apparently needing to bring feeling back into her legs. After fifteen minutes of warming up - including five spent with her pressed against the bathroom door, his hand inside the top of her dress - they start walking again.

This time, the alcohol has definitely worn off, but there’s a warmth winding through Jughead’s veins that he can only attribute to Betty. He hopes she has a matching feeling. It feels cliche, this - walking through the city at night, streets lit by streetlamps and neon signs, his hand in hers - like some sort of stupid movie, the kind he’d otherwise mock, and it’s now that he realizes, _oh,_ this is what everyone is singing about, too. And then suddenly, he doesn’t want the night to end.

All the same, when a cab passes them, Jughead runs halfway into the street to hail it. It doesn’t stop, but the one immediately afterward does, and it’s with incredible gratitude in her eyes that Betty lets Jughead help her into the vehicle.

Betty gives the driver her address. “Thanks,” she finishes, smiling at him through the rearview mirror. With a twinkle in her eye, she turns to Jughead and adds, “We’ll give you twenty extra if you don’t look in the mirror.”

Nothing untoward really _happens,_ because even if he seems like he could potentially be that kind of guy, he isn’t actually, and Betty is _definitely_ not that kind of girl.

Mostly, she swings her legs across his lap so that his hands and jacket can warm them up; it gets borderline risque when he’s unable to stop his fingers from creeping a little high, but then the cab pulls up at a curb and Jughead realizes that they’ve arrived.

“You’re coming up, aren’t you?” Betty breathes, a teasing glint in her eye.

 _Obviously_.

In response, Jughead shoves a hasty assortment of bills at the driver, then slips out of the backseat and holds his hand to Betty. She accepts it, managing somehow to gracefully exit the car despite its low profile and her incredibly short dress, and they slip inside the foyer of her building.

They make out in the elevator, his palms grasping at her ass and her hands pulling at his hair, and when they reach her floor, she all but drags him out by his lapels.

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In the morning, when Jughead wakes, it’s with the gentle weight of his naked girlfriend on his chest and the feeling of her fingertips playing with his hair.

“Morning, Juggie,” she says, her eyes soft and sleepy.

He kisses her gently. “Morning, babe.” The regular morning agenda runs through his mind, on instinct: pee, coffee, breakfast. He mentally adds _morning sex_ to the list, and decides he likes how it feels on the tip of his tongue.

And then, a sudden thought.

“So … which one of us is going to tell Veronica?”

 

 

**fin**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. We hope you've enjoyed this little adventure as much as we have! We wish you all the best over the holidays, whatever you celebrate - and if you're feeling the stress of the season, we hope this festive fluff distracts you from it for a moment. <3


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